Method and system for using offline map information aided enhanced portable navigation

ABSTRACT

The navigation solution of a portable device may be enhanced using map information. Sensor data for the portable device may be used to derive navigation solutions at a plurality of epochs over a first period of time. Position information for the device may be estimated at a time subsequent to the first period of time using the navigation solutions. Map information for an area encompassing a current location of the portable device may also be obtained. Multiple hypotheses regarding possible positions of the portable device may be generated using the estimated position information and the map information. By managing and processing the hypotheses, estimated position information for at least one epoch during the first period of time may be updated. An enhanced navigation solution for the at least one epoch may be provided using the updated estimated position information.

FIELD OF THE PRESENT DISCLOSURE

The present disclosure relates to a method and system for subsequently enhancing at least one navigation solution derived from sensor data for a device within a platform (such as for example person, vehicle, or vessel) through the use of map aided and/or map constraining to the navigation solution, wherein the device can be strapped or non-strapped to the platform, and wherein in case of non-strapped mobility of the device may be constrained or unconstrained within the platform, and wherein the device can be tilted to any orientation and still provide seamless navigation.

BACKGROUND

Portable electronic devices, such as those configured to be handheld or otherwise associated with a user, are employed in a wide variety of applications and environments. Increasingly, such devices are equipped with one or more sensors or other systems for determining the position or motion of the portable device. Notably, devices such as smartphones, tablets, smart watches or other portable devices may feature Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers, low cost Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) inertial sensors, barometers and magnetometers. GNSS and multi-sensors can be integrated to provide promising positioning results in most outdoor environments. However, some mass market applications require seamless positioning capabilities in all kinds of environments such as malls, offices or underground parking lots. In the absence of GNSS signals in indoor environments, the conventional strapdown Inertial Navigation System (SINS) that uses low cost inertial sensors, suffers significant performance degradation due to the accumulated sensor drifts and bias. As such, positioning technologies relying solely on motion sensors may not satisfy all requirements for seamless indoor and outdoor navigation applications.

Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) is an example of portable device indoor/outdoor positioning techniques, and has become the locus of industrial and academic research recently. Similar to the SINS, PDR accumulates successive displacement from a known starting point to derive the position. This displacement (step length) can be estimated with various algorithms within a certain accuracy using the inertial sensor measurements. The position error using step lengths from PDR accumulates much slower than that from the accelerometer derived displacement from SINS. The PDR shows improved performance over SINS without GNSS updates. However, PDR still lacks robustness because of the accumulated heading error. This shortcoming may cause a skewed path over time and produce position estimates that might not be consistent with the building layout. Therefore, the resulting navigation trajectories may cross walls, floors or other obstacles. In order to avoid these types of navigation trajectory and building layout inconsistencies, map information may be used to constrain the PDR solution to areas indicated as possible routes or a determined position may be updated to match an assumed position derived from map information. As used herein, the map aided techniques of this disclosure include either or both of constraining the derived position of a user or updating a derived position to a position determined from map information.

As mentioned, map information can be used to improve both the reliability and positioning accuracy of the navigation system. In order to use map information in a navigation system, various map aided algorithms have been proposed and applied in the prior art. Map aided algorithms can be generally classified into four categories: geometric, topological, probabilistic and other advanced techniques.

Geometric map aided algorithms typically consider only the geometric relationship between a user position and a map. They are widely used in the vehicle navigation application in which spatial road networks are abstracted as node points and curves. The most commonly used geometric map-aided algorithm is a point-to-point aided technique that matches the user position to a closest node point of a road segment. While easy to implement, it is sensitive to the way the road network was digitized. Another geometric map-aided algorithm is point-to-curve aided. Such techniques match user positions to the closet curve of a road. Each of the curves comprises line segments which are piecewise linear. Distance may be calculated from the user position to each of the line segments. The line segment that gives the smallest distance is selected as the matched road. Although it is more efficient than point-to-point aided, it may be unstable in dense road networks. Yet another geometric algorithm is curve-to-curve aided, which matches a short history of a user trajectory to curves of roads and may chose a road curve with the shortest distance to the user trajectory. Unfortunately, this approach is quite sensitive to outliers and often gives unexpected results as a result.

Topological map aided algorithms make use of historical user trajectory information, (which might include the previously identified mad segment) and topological information such as link connectivity, road classification, road restriction information (single direction, turn restrictions), in addition to the basis geometric information. Various previous works have applied topological information at different levels. For example, (i) using topological information to identify a set of candidate links, (ii) and to identify correct link from a set of candidate links. Therefore, topological map aided algorithms normally outperform algorithms relying only on geometric techniques. Moreover, a weight-based topological map aided may further improve the match aided performance. Such techniques use the correlation values in network geometry and topology information and positioning information form a GPS/DR integrated system as the weight for different road link, candidates. The link with the highest weight score may be selected as the correct road segment. However, the misidentification of a road link in previous epoch may have significant negative effects on the following map aided results.

Conventional probabilistic map aided algorithms use an error elliptical or rectangular region around the user position from the navigator. The error region depends on the variance of the estimated navigation position. The error region is then superimposed on the road network to identity a road segment on which the user is travelling. If an error region contains a number of segments, then the evaluation of candidate segments are carried out using heading, connectivity, and closeness criteria. In order to improve the computation efficiency and system reliability, the error region can be only constructed when the user travels through a junction. This is because the construction of an error region at each epoch may lead to incorrect link, identification when other road links are close to the link on which the user is travelling.

Advanced map aided algorithms generally refer to more advanced techniques such as Kalman filters, particle filters, fuzzy logic models or Bayesian inferences. For example, a Kalman filter may be used to propagate the user position either from GPS or GPS/DR and to re-estimate the user position to reduce the along track error by using an orthogonal projected map matched position. Similar concepts may also be used with a particle filter to predict and update the user's position. Further, a fuzzy inference system may be used to derive the matched road link with i) the distance between the user position and candidate links and ii) the difference between the platform direction and the link direction. A still further example is the use of a Multiple Hypothesis Technique (MHT) for map aided, by employing pseudo measurements (projected position and heading) from all possible links within the validation region of the current user's position and topological analysis of the road networks to derive a set of hypotheses and probabilities.

Despite the variety of conventionally available map aided algorithms, either geometric, topological, probabilistic or advanced methods, all may be considered to be based on the assumption that a user is constrained to the network of roads which can be abstracted as linked points, lines and curves. While this assumption may be sufficiently valid in many outdoor land vehicle navigation applications, a problem may be encountered in complex indoor environments, where the rooms, elevators, corridors and similar structures cannot be simplified as the aforementioned points, lines and curves. Some researchers use particle filters with geometric constraint (walls, inaccessible areas) information from a building floor plan to improve the indoor positioning accuracy, however, a user can enter or exit rooms in a random way and simple geometric constraints are undesirable in these scenarios. Furthermore, such techniques have not accommodated multi-floor situations. In contrast, conventional multi-floor map-aided techniques have relied only on geometric information to identify the location of stairs. Such approaches may not be sufficiently reliable, particularly when drift in the navigation solution occurs. Furthermore, most of the existing map aided algorithms ignore the user motion status information. The user's motion status such as going up/down stairs, standing/walking on escalators, or using elevators is beneficial to validate the candidate matched level change links or objects in the indoor navigation applications. Although the advanced algorithms such as fuzzy logics or particle filters have the potential to offer improved performance, they may not be generally suitable for real-time or causal applications due to the heavy computation burden.

Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide navigation techniques using available map information, particularly indoor maps, to enhance the accuracy and reliability of positioning applications for portable devices. It would similarly be desirable to provide map information aided techniques that operate web with seamless outdoor and indoor transition as well as handling multi-level indoor maps to reliably navigate a user in a complex multi-level indoor environment. It would further be desirable to provide map information aided techniques that may be applied subsequently so as to benefit from post facto information and processing techniques. Moreover, it would be desirable to provide map aided techniques adapted for efficient operation in client and server modes, by enabling a server to use uploaded navigation solutions of a user to subsequently generate map matched results to enhance one or more of the solutions. As will be described in the following materials, this disclosure satisfies these and other needs.

SUMMARY

As will be described in detail below, this disclosure includes a method for enhancing a navigation solution of a portable device and a platform using map information, wherein the mobility of the device is constrained or unconstrained within the platform and wherein the device may be tilted to any orientation. The method may include obtaining sensor data for the portable device representing motion of the portable device at a plurality of epochs over a first period of time, deriving navigation solutions for the epochs based at least in part on the sensor data, estimating position information for the portable device based at least in part on the plurality of navigation solutions at a time subsequent to the first period of time, obtaining map information for an area encompassing locations of the portable device during the first period of time, generating multiple hypotheses regarding possible positions of the portable device for at least one epoch during the first period of time based at least in part on the estimated position information and the map information, managing the hypotheses based at least in part on the estimated position information and the map information, processing the managed hypotheses to update the estimated position information for the portable device and providing an enhanced navigation solution for the at least one epoch using the updated estimated position information.

This disclosure also includes a portable device having an integrated sensor assembly that may output sensor data representing motion of the portable device for the portable device at a plurality of epochs over a first period of time, a navigation module configured to derive navigation solutions based at least in part on the sensor data at a plurality of sensor epochs and a processor that way implement a position estimator for providing estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on the plurality of navigation solutions at a time subsequent to the first period of time, a map handler for obtaining map information for an area encompassing locations of the portable device during the first period of time and a hypothesis analyzer for generating and managing multiple hypotheses regarding possible positions of the portable device for at least one epoch during the first period of time based at least in past on the estimated position information and the map information, so that the processor may update the estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on the managed hypotheses to provide an enhanced navigation solution for the at least one epoch using the updated estimated position information.

This disclosure also includes a server for enhancing a navigation solution of a portable device and a platform using map information, wherein the mobility of the portable device is constrained or unconstrained within the platform and wherein the portable device may be tilted to any orientation. The server may include a communications module for receiving information provided by the portable device, wherein the information corresponds to a plurality of epochs over a first period of time of sensor data representing motion of the portable device and a processor that may implement a position estimator for providing estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on a plurality of navigation solutions derived for the epochs at a time subsequent to the first period of time, a map handler for obtaining map information for an area encompassing locations of the portable device during the first period of time and a hypothesis analyzer for generating and managing multiple hypotheses regarding possible positions of the portable device for at least one epoch during the first period of time based at least in part on the estimated position information and the map information, so that the processor may update the estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on the managed hypotheses to provide an enhanced navigation solution for the at least one epoch using the updated estimated position information.

Still further, this disclosure includes a system for providing an enhanced navigation solution using map information. The system may have a portable device with an integrated sensor assembly, configured to output sensor data representing motion of the portable device for the portable device at a plurality of epochs over a first period of time and a communications module for transmitting information corresponding to the epochs. The system may also include remote processing resources to receive the information from the portable device and a processor that may implement a position estimator for providing estimated position information for the portable device based as least in part on a plurality of navigation solutions for the portable device derived for each epoch, at a time subsequent to the first period of time, a map handler for obtaining map information for an area encompassing locations of the portable device during the first period of time and a hypothesis analyzer for generating and managing multiple hypotheses regarding possible positions of the portable device for at least one epoch during the first period of time based at least in part on the estimated position information and the map information, so that the processor may update the estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on the managed hypotheses to provide an enhanced navigation solution for the at least one epoch using the updated estimated position information.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is schematic diagram of a system for offline enhancement of a navigation solution according to an embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart of a routine for enhancing a navigation solution with offline map information according to an embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a schematic representation of functional blocks for performing offline map matching to enhance a navigation solution of a portable device according to an embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a schematic representation of an input handler for performing offline map matching to enhance a navigation solution of a portable device according to an embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a schematic representation of map entity clipping in a geometric map according to an embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a schematic representation of grid map according to an embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a schematic representation of an error ellipse for use m generating hypotheses according to an embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a schematic representation of an error ellipse projected onto map entities according to an embodiment.

FIG. 9 is a schematic representation of an error ellipse in a corridor scenario with door information according to an embodiment.

FIG. 10 is a schematic representation of an error ellipse in a corridor scenario without door information according to an embodiment.

FIG. 11 is a schematic representation comparing navigation solutions in a level change scenario according to an embodiment.

FIG. 12 is a schematic representation comparing navigation solutions following heading oscillation removal according to an embodiment.

FIGS. 13-17 are schematic representations comparing trajectories developed from navigation solutions and enhanced navigation solutions in a retail venue according to an embodiment.

FIGS. 18-26 are schematic representations of the use of forward and backward processing to provide enhanced navigation solutions in the retail venue according to an embodiment.

FIG. 27 is a schematic diagram of another system for offline enhancement of a navigation solution according to an embodiment.

FIG. 28 is a schematic diagram of a device for offline enhancement of a navigation solution according to an embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

At the outset, it is so be understood that this disclosure is not limited to particularly exemplified materials, architectures, routines, methods or structures as such may vary. Thus, although a number of such options, similar or equivalent to those described herein, can be used in the practice or embodiments of this disclosure, the preferred materials and methods are described herein.

It is also to be understood that the terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments of this disclosure only and is not intended to be limiting.

The detailed description set forth below in connection with the appended drawings is intended as a description of exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure and is not intended to represent the only exemplary embodiments in which the present disclosure can be practiced. The term “exemplary” used throughout this description means “serving as an example, instance, or illustration,” and should not necessarily be construed as preferred or advantageous over other exemplary embodiments. The detailed description includes specific details for the purpose of providing a thorough understanding of the exemplary embodiments of the specification. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the exemplary embodiments of the specification may be practiced without these specific details. In some instances, well known structures and devices are shown in block diagram form in order to avoid obscuring the novelty of the exemplary embodiments presented herein.

For purposes of convenience and clarity only, directional terms, such as top, bottom, left, right, up, down, over, above, below, beneath, rear, back, and front, may be used with respect to the accompanying drawings or chip embodiments. These and similar directional terms should not be construed to limit the scope of the disclosure in any manner.

In this specification and in the claims, it will be understood that when an element is referred to as being “connected to” or “coupled to” another element, it can be directly connected or coupled to the other element or intervening elements may be present. In contrast, when an element is referred to as being “directly connected to” or “directly coupled to” another element, there are no intervening elements present.

Some portions of the detailed descriptions which follow are presented in terms of procedures, logic blocks, processing and other symbolic representations of operations on data bits within a computer memory. These descriptions and representations are the means used by those skilled is the data, processing arts to most effectively convey the substance of their work to others skilled in the art. In the present application, a procedure, logic block, process, or the like, is conceived to be a self-consistent sequence of steps or instructions leading to a desired result. The steps are those requiring physical manipulations of physical quantities. Usually, although not necessarily, these quantities take the form of electrical or magnetic signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated in a computer system.

It should be borne in mind, however, that all of these and similar terms are to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities and are merely convenient labels applied to these quantities. Unless specifically stated otherwise as apparent from the following discussions, it is appreciated that throughout the present application, discussions utilizing the terms such as “accessing,” “receiving,” “sending,” “using,” “selecting,” “determining,” “normalizing,” “multiplying,” “averaging,” “monitoring,” “comparing,” “applying,” “updating,” “measuring,” “deriving” or the like, refer to the actions and processes of a computer system, or similar electronic computing device, that manipulates and transforms data represented as physical (electronic) quantities within the computer system's registers and memories into other data similarly represented as physical quantities within the computer system memories or registers or other such information storage, transmission or display devices.

Embodiments described herein may be discussed in the general context of processor-executable instructions residing on some form of non-transitory processor-readable medium, such as program modules, executed by one or more computers or other devices. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, etc., that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. The functionality of the program modules may be combined or distributed as desired in various embodiments.

In the figures, a single block may be described as performing a function or functions; however, in actual practice, the function or functions performed by that block may be performed in a single component or across multiple components, and/or may be performed using hardware, using software, or using a combination of hardware and Software. To clearly illustrate this interchangeability of hardware and software, various illustrative components, blocks, modules, circuits, and steps have beep described above generally in terms of their functionality. Whether such functionality is implemented as hardware or software depends upon the particular application and design constraints imposed on the overall system. Skilled artisans may implement the described functionality in varying ways for each particular application, but such implementation decisions should not be interpreted as causing a departure from the scope of the present disclosure. Also, the exemplary wireless communications devices may include components other than those shown, including well-known components such as a processor, memory and the like.

The techniques described herein may be implemented in hardware, software, firmware, or any combination thereof unless specifically described as being implemented in a specific manner. Any features described as modules or components may also be implemented together in an integrated logic device or separately as discrete but interoperable logic devices. If implemented in software, the techniques may be realized at least in part by a non-transitory processor-readable storage medium comprising instructions that, when executed, performs one or more of the methods described above. The non-transitory processor-readable data storage medium may form part of a computer program product, which may include packaging materials.

The non-transitory processor-readable storage medium may comprise random access memory (RAM) such as synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM), read only memory (ROM), non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), FLASH memory, other known storage media, and the like. The techniques additionally, or alternatively, may be realized at least in part by a processor-readable communication medium that carries or communicates code in the form of instructions or data structures and that can be accessed, read, and/or executed by a computer or other processor. For example, a carrier wave may be employed to carry computer-readable electronic data such as those used in transmitting and receiving electronic mail or in accessing a network such as the Internet or a local area network (LAN). Of course, many modifications may be made to this configuration without departing from the scope or spirit of the claimed subject matter.

The various illustrative logical blocks, modules, circuits and instructions described in connection with the embodiments disclosed herein may be executed by one or more processors, such as one or more motion processing units (MPUs), digital signal processors (DSPs), general purpose microprocessors, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), application specific instruction set processors (ASlPs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), or other equivalent integrated or discrete logic circuitry. The term “processor,” as used herein may refer to any of the foregoing structure or any other structure suitable for implementation of the techniques described herein. In addition, in some aspects, the functionality described herein may be provided within dedicated software modules or hardware modules configured as described herein. Also, the techniques could be fully implemented in one or more circuits or logic elements. A general purpose processor may be a microprocessor, but in the alternative, the processor may be any conventional processor, controller, microcontroller, or state machine. A processor may also be implemented as a combination of computing devices, e.g., a combination of an MPU and a microprocessor, a plurality of microprocessors, one or more microprocessors in conjunction with an MPU core, or any other such configuration.

Unless defined otherwise, all technical and scientific terms used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one having ordinary skill in the art to which the disclosure pertains.

Finally, as used in this specification and the appended claims, the singular forms “a, “an” and “the” include plural referents unless the content clearly dictates otherwise.

The techniques of this disclosure are directed to enhancing a navigation solution of a portable device using map information. Often, such portable devices may be associated with a platform that transports the device. The platform may be the user, as in the example of a smartphone being carried as a user walks, runs, swims or otherwise undergoes locomotion. The platform may also be considered a vehicle or vessel that conveys the user and the portable device. Although the portable device generally maybe transported or conveyed in the direction of movement of the platform, its orientation may not be constrained. Returning to the example of the smartphone, it may be held in the user's hand and employed in a variety of orientations or carried in a pocket, holster, bag or other manners. In other examples, the portable device may be strapped to the platform, such as with a vehicle mount, or may be non-strapped. When non-strapped, the mobility of the device may be constrained or unconstrained within the platform and as a result, circumstances may exist such that the device can be tilted to any orientation with respect to the user or platform. The portable device may generate a series of navigation solutions over a given period of time.

As an illustration only and without limitation, a user may be carrying a smartphone while traversing a venue, such as shopping within a store. During this time, the smartphone may derive a number of navigation solutions representing the trajectory of the user through the store. In one aspect, the smartphone may use any suitable real-time technique to generates those navigation solutions, including an inertial navigation routine employing dead reckoning, a reference-based location service utilizing a source of absolute navigation information, a location beaconing system or any other suitable technique, or combinations thereof. Although of substantial benefit, these real-time solutions may nonetheless suffer from inaccuracies or limitations. Again without limitation, an inertial dead reckoning system may be subject to drift over time due to the characteristics of currently-employed sensors or a source of absolute navigation information such as a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) may suffer from poor reception in indoor environments.

Accordingly, the techniques of this disclosure utilize the series of navigation solutions derived over the given time period at a subsequent time to enhance at least one of file navigation solutions by an offline map matching routine. For example, position information for the portable device may be estimated subsequent to the derivation of the navigation solutions. Multiple hypotheses may be generated and managed using the estimated position information and map information for an area corresponding to the area occupied by the user when the navigation solution were derived. Based on the hypotheses, the estimated position information may be updated and used to enhance at least one of the navigation solutions.

As will be described in further detail below, the techniques for enhancing a navigation solution of a portable device and a platform using map information involve obtaining sensor data for the portable device. The portable device derives navigation solutions using the sensor data. Subsequently, the offline map matching routine may be performed to enhance at least one of the navigation solutions. In some embodiments, the portable device may have sufficient processing capabilities and/or other resources available to perform the offline map matching routine locally, such as in the background when greater access to the processing capabilities is available. However, in other embodiments, the portable device may communicate the navigation solutions, which may include any or all of the associated sensor data, to a remote server that may have greater processing capabilities and/or superior access to map information to be used in the offline map matching routine. Following enhancement, the navigation solution may be used for any suitable purpose and need not involve the user directly, such as for the analysis of consumer metrics and behavior. However, the enhanced navigation solution(s) may also be returned to the portable device, also for any suitable purpose, such as to provide the user with more accurate navigation information regarding the trajectory or to help improve future navigation performance of the portable device.

To help illustrate these aspects, a representative system for offline map matching is schematically depicted in FIG. 1, with portable device 100 represented by high level schematic blocks. As will be appreciated, device 100 may be implemented as a device apparatus, such as a handheld device that can be moved in space by a user and its motion, location and/or orientation in space therefore sensed. For example, such a handheld device may be a mobile phone (e.g., smartphone, cellular phone, a phone running, on a local network, or any other telephone handset), tablet, personal digital assistant (PDA), video game player, video game controller, navigation device, wearable device (e.g., glasses, watch, belt clip), fitness tracker, virtual or augmented reality equipment, mobile internet device (MID), personal navigation device (PND), digital still camera, digital video camera, binoculars, telephoto lens, portable music, video or media player, remote control, or other hand held device, or a combination of one or more of these devices.

As shown, device 100 includes a host processor 102, which may be one or more microprocessors, central processing units (CPUs), or other processors, to run software programs, which may be stored in memory 104, associated with the functions of device 100. Multiple layers of software can be provided in memory 104, which may be any combination of computer readable medium such as electronic memory or other storage medium such as hard dish, optical disk, etc., for use with the boat processor 102. For example, an operating system layer can be provided for device 100 to control and manage system resources in real time, enable functions of application software and other layers, and interface application programs with other software and functions of device 100. Similarly, different software application programs such as menu navigation software, games, camera inaction control navigation software, communications software, such as telephony or wireless local area network (WLAN) software, or any of a wide variety of other software and functional interfaces can be provided. In some embodiments, multiple different applications can be provided on a single device 100, and in some of those embodiments, multiple applications can run simultaneously.

Device 100 includes at least one sensor assembly, as shown here in the form of integrated motion processing unit (MPU™) 106 featuring sensor processor 108, memory 110 and inertial sensor 112. Memory 110 may store algorithms, routines or other instructions for processing data output by inertial sensor 112 and/or other sensors as described below using logic or controllers of sensor processor 108, as well as storing raw data and/or motion data output by inertial sensor 112 or other sensors. Inertial sensor 112 may be one or more sensors for measuring motion of device 100 in space. Depending on the configuration, MPU 106 measures one or more axes of rotation and/or one or more axes of acceleration of the device. In one embodiment, inertial sensor 112 may include rotational motion sensors or linear motion sensors. For example, the rotational motion sensors may be gyroscopes to measure angular velocity along one or more orthogonal axes and the linear motion sensors may be accelerometers to measure linear acceleration along one or more orthogonal axes. In one aspect, three gyroscopes and three accelerometers may be employed, such that a sensor fusion operation performed by sensor processor 108, or other processing resources of device 100, combines data from inertial sensor 112 to provide a six axis determination of motion. As desired, inertial sensor 112 may be implemented using Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) to be integrated with MPU 100 in a single package. Exemplary details regarding suitable configurations of host processor 102 and MFU 106 may be found in co-pending, commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 11/774,488, filed Jul. 6, 2007, and 12/106,021, filed Apr. 11, 2008, which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety, Suitable implementations for MPU 106 in device 100 ore available from InvenSense, Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif.

Alternatively or in addition, device 100 may implement a sensor assembly in the form of external sensor 114. This is optional and not required in all embodiments. External sensor may represent one or more sensors as described above, such as an accelerometer and/or a gyroscope, which output data for use in deriving a navigation solution. As used herein, “external” means a sensor that is not integrated with MPU 106 and may be remote or local to device 100. Also alternatively or in addition, MPU 106 may receive data front an auxiliary sensor 116 configured to measure one or more aspects about the environment surrounding device 100. This is optional and not required in all embodiments. For example, a barometer and/or a magnetometer may be used to re line position determinations made using inertial sensor 112. In one embodiment, auxiliary sensor 116 may include a magnetometer measuring along three orthogonal axes and output data to be fused with the gyroscope and accelerometer inertial sensor data to provide a nine axis determination of motion. In another embodiment, auxiliary sensor 116 may also include a barometer to provide an altitude determination that may be fused with the other sensor data to provide a ten axis determination of motion. Although described in the context of one or more sensors being MEMS based, the techniques of this disclosure may be applied to any sensor design or implementation.

In the embodiment shown, host processor 102, memory 104, MPU 106 and other components of device 100 may be coupled through bus 118, which may be any suitable bus or interface, such as a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) bus, a universal serial bus (USB), a universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART) serial bus, a suitable advanced microcontroller bus architecture (AMBA) interface, an Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) bus, a serial digital input output (SDIO) bus, a serial peripheral interface (SPI) or other equivalent. Depending on the architecture, different bus configurations may be employed as desired. For example, additional buses may be used to couple the various components of device 100, such as by using a dedicated bus between host processor 102 and memory 104.

In one aspect, the various operations of this disclosure used to derive a navigation solution for portable device 100 may be implemented through navigation module 120 as a set of suitable instructions stored in memory 104 that may be read and executed by host processor 102. Navigation module 120 may employ a reference-based strategy, a self-contained strategy, or any combination of strategies to provide any desired degree of location awareness capabilities. For example, navigation module 120 may employ inertial navigation techniques utilizing sensor data, such as from inertial sensor 112 and/or external sensor 114, as obtained for a current sensor epoch to derive a navigation solution for that epoch. Such techniques may involve dead reckoning or the like, and may determine an orientation for device 100, including values such as any roll, pitch, and azimuth (heading) angles. The navigation solutions derived by navigation module 120 represent contemporaneous determinations of position information tor portable device 100. Although some transmission, some possible buffering, and processing time may be required, the results are at least near real time (there could be some possible latencies) and may use any information available up until the time the navigation solution is derived. Still further, navigation module 120 may also be configured to determine a motion mode that indicates the user's motion patterns, which may include without limitation, walking, driving, running, going up/down stairs, riding an elevator, walking/standing on an escalator, and other similar motion patterns. In some embodiments, navigation module 120 may employ a real-time map matching routine to aid the derivation of navigation solutions in a causal manner.

Navigation module 120 may also use a source of absolute navigation information 122, such as a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver, including without limitation the Global Positioning System (GPS), the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), Galileo and/or Beidou, as well as WiFi™ positioning, cellular tower positioning, Bluetooth™ positioning beacons or other similar methods when deriving a navigation solution. This is optional and not required in all embodiments. Navigation module 120 may also be configured to use information from a wireless communication protocol to provide a position determination using signal trilateration. Any suitable protocol, including cellular-based and wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies such as Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA), Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.16 (WiMAX), Long Term Evolution (LTE), IEEE 802.11 (WiFi™) and others may be employed. Further, portable device 100 may also have a communications module 124 for transmitting and/or receiving information, including navigation solutions derived by navigation module 120.

Multiple layers of software may be employed as desired and stored in any combination of memory 104, memory 110, or other suitable location. For example, a motion algorithm layer can provide motion algorithms that provide lower-level processing for raw sensor data provided from the motion sensors and other sensors. A sensor device driver layer may provide a software interface to the hardware sensors of device 100. Further, a suitable application program interface (APS) may be provided to facilitate communication between host processor 102 and MPU 106, for example, to transmit desired sensor processing tasks.

In this exemplary system, portable device 100 communicates raw sensor data or navigation solutions derived for a plurality of sensor epochs over a first period of time to server 126. Subsequent to the first period of time, server 126 may then perform an offline map matching routine according to the techniques of this disclosure using the navigation solutions from portable device 100 to provide an enhanced navigation solution for at least one of the sensor epochs. One suitable architecture of server 126 is depicted using high level schematic blocks in FIG. 1, and may include server processor 128 that is in communication with memory 130 over bus 132. As will be described in further detail below, server processor 128 may execute instructions stored in memory 130 that are represented as functional blocks, including position estimator 134, hypothesis analyzer 136, map handler 131, input handler 140 and anchor point manager 142. Position estimator 134 may use navigation solutions for a plurality of sensor epochs provided by navigation module 120 to estimate position information for portable device 100. The estimated position information may also be updated, using information from hypothesis analyzer 136, which may be configured to generate, evaluate and combine multiple hypotheses regarding possible positions of portable device 100 using the estimated position and information from map handler 138. Hypothesis analyzer 136 may also be configured to analyze the navigation solutions and determine a motion mode that indicates the user's motion patterns in a similar manner to that described above with regard to navigational module 120. Either or both navigation module 120 and hypothesis analyzer 136 may determine a motion mode, but hypothesis analyzer may have advantages associated with the availability of both past and future information for motion detection at a given time and/or may have greater processing resources available to perform more sophisticated algorithms, and correspondingly may be give greater weight if conflicting defections exist. In turn, map handler 138 may be configured to access external information regarding an area encompassing a location of portable device 100 when the navigation solutions were derived and present the information in a form usable by hypothesis analyzer 136. Input handler 140 may perform preliminary processing of the navigation solutions derived by navigation module 120, including filtering, categorizing motion segments, and/or detecting motion characteristics. Anchor point manager 142 may identify one or more anchor points having known position information that may be associated with one or more of the navigation solutions.

By processing the generated hypotheses, such as combining using appropriate weighting, and averaging, electing a selected hypothesis, electing a group of hypotheses and combining only these using appropriate weighting and averaging, or other suitable operations, the output from hypothesis analyzer 136 may be used by position estimator to update the estimated position information. The estimated position information and/or updated estimated position information may include, in addition to position information, velocity and/or heading information, as well as any other information related to the motion or position of device 100, and may also include map entity information. The updated estimated position may then be used as an enhanced navigation solution for at least one sensor epoch or may be fed back to navigation module 120 for use in deriving an enhanced navigation solution for at least one epoch. In some embodiments, values from the updated estimated position information and the navigation solution may be used in the enhanced navigation solution.

Server 120 may also include a communications module 144 to receive raw sensor data or navigation solutions for portable device 100 derived by navigation module 120, and if desired, may transmit information related to the enhanced navigation solution to portable device 100 or to another destination. Communications between portable device 100 and server 120 may employ any suitable protocol. For example, a shorter range, low power communication protocol such as BLUETOOTH®, ZigBee®, ANT or a wired connection may be used or a longer range communication protocol, such as a transmission control protocol, internet protocol (TCP/IP) packet-based communication, accessed using a wireless local area network (WLAN), cell phone protocol or the like may be used. In general the system depicted in FIG. 1 may embody aspects of a networked or distributed computing environment. Portable devices 100 and server 126 may communicate either directly or indirectly, such as through multiple interconnected networks. As will be appreciated, a variety of systems, components, and network configurations, topologies and infrastructures, such as client/server, peer-to-peer, or hybrid architectures, may be employed to support distributed computing environments. For example, computing systems can be connected together by wired or wireless systems, by local networks or widely distributed networks. Currently, many networks are coupled to the Internet, which provides an infrastructure for widely distributed computing and encompasses many different networks, though any network infrastructure can be used for exemplary communications made incident to the techniques as described in various embodiments.

As noted, portable device 100 may derive the navigation solutions and server 126 may perform an offline map matching routine to provide an enhanced navigation solution for at least one of the navigation solutions. However, any or all of the functions described as being performed may be performed by any number of discrete devices in communication with each other, or may be performed by portable device 100 itself in other suitable system architectures. Accordingly, it should be appreciated that any suitable division of processing resources may be employed whether within one device or among a plurality of devices. Further, aspects implemented in software may include but are not limited to, application software, firmware, resident software, microcode, etc., and may take the form of a computer program product accessible from a computer-usable or computer-readable medium providing program code for use by or in connection with a computer or any instruction execution system, such as host processor 102, sensor processor 108, server processor 128, a dedicated processor or any other processing resources of portable device 100, server 126 or other remote processing resources, or may be implemented using any desired combination of software, hardware and firmware.

For example, another embodiment is schematically depicted in FIG. 27. Here, similar components have corresponding reference numbers (such as, portable device 100 of FIG. 1 may correspond to portable device 2700 of FIG. 27). As such, portable device 2700 includes a host processor 2702, which may be one or more microprocessors, central processing units (CPUs), or other processors to run software programs, which may be stored in memory 2704, associated with the functions of device 2700. Multiple layers of software can be provided in memory 2704. Device 2700 includes at least one sensor assembly, as shown here in the form of integrated motion processing unit (MPU™) 2706 featuring sensor processor 2708, memory 2710 and inertial sensor 2712. Memory 2710 may store algorithms, routines or other instructions for processing data output by inertial sensor 2712 and/or other sensors as described below using logic or controllers of sensor processor 2708, as well as storing raw data and/or motion data output by inertial sensor 2712 or other sensors. Inertial sensor 2712 may be one or more sensors for measuring motion of device 2700 in space, such as a gyroscope and/or an accelerometer as described above. Device 2700 may also implement a sensor assembly in the form of external sensor 2714. This is optional and not required in all embodiments. Also alternatively or in addition, MPU 2706 may receive data from an auxiliary sensor 2716 configured to measure one or more aspects about the environment surrounding device 2700. This is optional and not required in all embodiments, in the embodiment shown, host processor 2702, memory 2704, MPU 2706 and other components of device 2700 may be coupled through bus 2718, which may be any suitable bus or interface. Device 2700 may also have a source of absolute navigation information 2722, which is optional and may have a communications module 2724 for transmitting and/or receiving information, including enhanced navigation solutions derived remotely.

In this exemplary system, portable device 2700 communicates raw sensor data for a plurality of sensor epochs over a first period of time to server 2726, which may include a navigation module 2720 to derive a navigation solution for portable device 2700 for the raw sensor data at each epoch. Navigation module 2720 may be implemented as a set of suitable instructions stored in memory 2730 that may be read and executed by server processor 2728. Subsequent to the first period of time, server 2726 may then perform an offline map matching routine according to the techniques of this disclosure using the navigation solutions from navigation module 2720 to provide an enhanced navigation solution for at least one of the sensor epochs. Server processor 2728 may be in communication with memory 2730 over bits 2732 and may execute instructions stored in memory 2730 that are represented as functional blocks, including position estimator 2734, hypothesis analyzer 2736, map handler 2738, input handler 2740 and anchor point manager 2742, using similar techniques. Server 2726 may also include a communications module 2744 to receive raw sensor data for portable device 2700, and if desired, may transmit information related to the enhanced navigation solution to portable device 2700 or to another destination.

As another illustrative example, the embodiment schematically depleted in FIG. 28 represents a device in which the offline map matching routine is performed locally. Again, similar components have corresponding reference numbers (such as, portable device 100 of FIG. 1 may correspond to portable device 2800 of FIG. 28). Accordingly, portable device 2800 includes a host processor 2802, which may be one or more microprocessors, central processing units (CPUs), or other processors to run software programs, which may be stored in memory 2804, associated with the functions of device 2800. Multiple layers of software can be provided in memory 2804. Device 2800 includes at least one sensor assembly, as shown here in the form of integrated motion processing unit (MPU™) 2806 featuring sensor processor 2808, memory 2810 and inertial sensor 2812. Memory 2810 may store algorithms, routines or other instructions for processing data output by inertial sensor 2812 and/or other sensors as described below using logic or controllers of sensor processor 2808, as well as storing raw data and/or motion, data output by inertial sensor 2812 or other sensors. Inertial sensor 2812 may be one or more sensors for measuring motion of device 2800 in space, such as a gyroscope and/or an accelerometer as described above. Device 2800 may also implement a sensor assembly in the form of external sensor 2814. This is optional and not required in all embodiments. Also alternatively or in addition, MPU 2806 may receive data from an auxiliary censor 2816 configured to measure one or more aspects about the environment surrounding device 2800. This is optional and not required in all embodiments, in the embodiment shown, host processor 2802, memory 2804, MPU 2806 and other components of device 2800 may be coupled through has 2818, which may be any suitable bus or interface. Device 2800 may also have a source of absolute navigation information 2822, which is optional and not required in all embodiments.

In this embodiment, portable device 2800 includes navigation module 2820, representing instructions stored in memory 2804 for execution by host processor 2802 to derive a navigation solution for portable device 2800 using the sensor data at each epoch. Subsequent to the first period of time, device 2800 may then perform m offline map matching routine according to the techniques of this disclosure using the navigation solutions from navigation module 2820 to provide an enhanced navigation solution for at least one of the sensor epochs. Host processor 2802 may execute instructions that are represented as functional blocks, including position estimator 2834, hypothesis analyzer 2836, map handler 2838, input handler 2840 and anchor point manager 2842, using similar techniques.

A representative routine involving the techniques of this disclosure is depicted in FIG. 2. Beginning with 200, sensor data may be obtained for a plurality of epochs over a given time period, such as from inertial sensor 112 and/or external sensor 114, for the portable device. Using the sensor data, navigation module 120 may derive a navigation solution at each sensor epoch in 202. In embodiments where offline map matching is performed remotely, either the raw sensor data, the derived navigation solutions or both may be transmitted to remote processing resources, such as server 126. For example, the derivation of navigation solutions for each sensor epoch may be performed by navigation module 120 at portable device 100 or may be performed at server 126 using the raw sensor data for each sensor epoch as transmitted by portable device 100. In other embodiments, portable device 100 may perform the offline map matching locally. Regardless of whether the offline map matching occurs locally or remotely, position information for portable device 100 may be estimated in 204 at a time subsequent to the given time period and map information for a surrounding area may be obtained in 206. Multiple hypotheses may be generated in 208 for at least one of the sensor epochs from the estimated position information and the map information. Next, in 210, the generated hypotheses are managed as described herein and then processed in 212 to update the estimated position information. An enhanced navigation solution for the at least one sensor epoch may then be provided its 214.

In one aspect, absolute navigation information may be obtained for the portable device, wherein the navigation solution derived for at least one epoch may be based at least in part on the absolute navigation information. The absolute navigation information may be obtained from any one or any combination of the following: (i) a global navigation satellite system (GNSS); (ii) cell-based positioning; (iii) WiFi-based positioning; or (iv) other wireless-based positioning.

In one aspect, providing an enhanced navigation solution may include performing a forward processing operation over the first period of time.

In one aspect, providing an enhanced navigation solution may include performing a backward processing operation over the first period of time.

In one aspect, providing an enhanced navigation solution may include performing a forward processing operation and a backward processing operation over the first period of time.

In one aspect, providing an enhanced navigation solution may include a forward processing operation, a backward processing operation over the first period of time, and a combination of the forward processing and backward processing.

In one aspect, providing an enhanced navigation solution may include performing a smoothing operation over the first period of time.

In one aspect, providing an enhanced navigation solution may include performing a backward smoothing operation over the first period of time.

In one aspect, providing an enhanced navigation solution may include performing a multiple pass processing operation over the first period of time.

In one aspect, heading information for the navigation solution of at least one epoch may be filtered. Filtering heading information may include applying a zero-phase low pass filter.

In one aspect, the plurality of navigation solutions may be categorized into straight-line segments and turn segments and may further include detecting a false turn.

In one aspect, period of non-meaningful motion may be characterized within the first period of time, such as a fidgeting period. Misalignment may be tracked corresponding to the fidgeting period. Further, steps detected during the fidgeting period may be compensated.

In one aspect, the map information may be preprocessed. Preprocessing the map information may include extracting map entities. Preprocessing the map information may also include clipping at least one foreground map entity from a background entity. Clipping the background entity may define a traversable area. Still further, preprocessing the map information may include representing a map entity as a relatively complex polygon and decomposing the polygon into a plurality of relatively more simple polygons. Preprocessing the snap information may also include generating a grid of connected links and nodes.

In one aspect, the estimated position information may be an error region representing potential positions of the portable device at the at least sensor epoch. At least one of the hypotheses may be generated by projecting the error region onto the snap information. A plurality of hypotheses may be generated by projecting the error region onto the map information when an overlap with a plurality of map entities occurs.

In one aspect, the map information may be a polygon based geometric map. Alternatively or in addition, the map information may be a grid map.

In one aspect, the map information may be a grid map and the estimated position information may be based at least in part on a correlation between a determined user trajectory for the at least one instant during the first period time and a topological feature of the grid map. A weighted topological algorithm may be applied.

Managing the hypotheses may include at least one of adding, eliminating and combining hypotheses. An anchor point may be identified that is associated with the navigation solution of at least one epoch and managing the hypotheses may be based at least in part on the identified anchor point. A plurality of ordered anchor points may be identified. A hypothesis may be generated based at least in part on the ordered anchor points. Alternatively or in addition,, a plurality of unordered anchor points may be identified, which in some embodiments may be used to prune at least one hypothesis. Still further, one or more improperly ordered anchor points may be identified.

In one aspect, managing the hypotheses may include applying a decision making logic. The decision logic may be configured for a wall crossing event. The decision making logic may be configured for a level change event.

In one aspect, generated multiple hypotheses for a plurality of sensor epochs may be stored. Storing generated multiple hypotheses may include relating hypotheses to each other. The stored generated multiple hypotheses may be weighted based at least in part on the relations.

In one aspect, the navigation solution may include a motion mode for the user. The estimated position information may be is based at least in part on the motion mode. The hypotheses may be managed based at least in part on the motion mode. Further, a level change event may be based at least in past on the motion mode.

In one aspect, the enhanced navigation solution may include a motion mode for the user detected based at least in part on a map entity associated with the estimated position information.

In one aspect, position information for the portable device may be estimated using at least one of a prediction only Kalman filter, a near constant velocity Kalman filter, a prediction only particle filler and a near constant velocity particle filter.

In one aspect, at least one of deriving the navigation solutions, obtaining map information, generating multiple hypotheses, managing the hypotheses, process the managed hypotheses to update the estimated position information for the portable device and providing an enhanced navigation solution using the updated estimated position information may be performed remotely

As noted, the techniques of this disclosure may be implemented using a portable device that includes an integrated sensor assembly that may output sensor data representing motion of the portable device for the portable device at a plurality of epochs over a first period of time, a navigation module configured to derive navigation solutions based at least in part on the sensor data at a plurality of sensor epochs and a processor that may implement a position estimator for providing estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on the plurality of navigation solutions at a time subsequent to the first period of time, a map handler for obtaining map information for an area encompassing locations of the portable device during the first period of time and a hypothesis analyzer for generating and managing multiple hypotheses regarding possible positions of the portable device for at least one epoch during the first period of time based at least in part on the estimated position information and the map information, so that the processor may update the estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on the managed hypotheses to provide an enhanced navigation solution for the at least one epoch using the updated estimated position information.

In one aspect, the portable device may have a source of absolute navigation information for the portable device, wherein the navigation solution for at least one epoch may be based at least in part on the absolute navigation information. The absolute navigation information may be obtained from any one or any combination of the following: (i) a global navigation satellite system (GNSS); (ii) cell-based positioning; (iii) WiFi-based positioning; or (iv) other wireless-based positioning. The portable device may have an integrated sensor assembly that outputs sensor data representing motion of the portable device at the plurality of epochs. The sensor assembly may include an accelerometer and a gyroscope. The sensor assembly may be an inertial sensor implemented as a Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS).

In one aspect, the portable device may have memory for storing multiple hypotheses generated by the hypotheses analyzer.

This disclosure also includes a server for enhancing a navigation solution of a portable device and a platform using map information, wherein the mobility of the portable device is constrained or unconstrained within the platform and wherein the portable device may be tilted to any orientation. The server may include a communications module for receiving information provided by the portable device, wherein the information corresponds to a plurality of epochs over a first period of time of sensor data representing motion of the portable device and a processor that may implement a position estimator for providing estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on a plurality of navigation solutions derived for the epochs at a time subsequent to be first period of time, a map handler for obtaining map information for an area encompassing locations of the portable device during the first period of time and a hypothesis analyzer for generating and managing multiple hypotheses regarding possible positions of the portable device for at least one epoch during the first period of time based at least in part on the estimated position information and the map information, so that the processor may update the estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on the managed hypotheses to provide an enhanced navigation solution for the at least one epoch using the updated estimated position information.

In one aspect, the information received by the communications module may be sensor data for the portable device representing motion of the portable device at the epochs and the processor may derive navigation solutions for the epochs based at least in part on the sensor data.

In one aspect, the information received by the communications module may be navigation solutions derived for the epochs by the portable device.

In one aspect, the communications module may transmit the enhanced navigation solution to the portable device.

In one aspect, the server may have memory for storing multiple hypotheses generated by the hypotheses analyzer.

Still further, this disclosure includes a system for providing an enhanced navigation solution using map information. The system may have a portable device with an integrated sensor assembly, configured to output sensor data representing motion of the portable device for the portable device at a plurality of epochs over a first period of time and a communications module for transmitting information corresponding to the epochs. The system may also include remote processing resources to receive the information from the portable device and a processor that may implement a position estimator for providing estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on a plurality of navigation solutions for the portable device derived for each epoch, at a time subsequent to the first period of time, a map handler for obtaining map information for an area encompassing locations of the portable device during the first period of time and a hypothesis analyzer for generating and managing multiple hypotheses regarding possible positions of the portable device for at least one epoch during the first period of time based at least in part on the estimated position information and the map information, so that the processor may update the estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on the managed hypotheses to provide an enhanced navigation solution for the at least one epoch using the updated estimated position information.

In one aspect, the information received by the remote processing resources may be sensor data for the portable device and the remote processing resources may derive navigation solutions for the epochs based at least in part on the sensor data.

In one aspect, the portable device may have a navigation module configured to derive navigation solutions based at least in part on the sensor data at the plurality of epochs and the communications module may transmit the navigation solutions.

In one aspect, the remote processing resources may transmit the enhanced navigation solution to the portable device.

In one aspect, the remote processing resources may have memory for storing multiple hypotheses generated by the hypotheses analyzer.

EXAMPLES

As described above, the techniques of the disclosure involve providing an offline enhanced navigation solution using map information. In some embodiments, operations and/or algorithms related to map matching may be similar to those described in co-pending, commonly-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/845,903, filed Sep. 4, 2015, which is entitled “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR USING MAP INFORMATION AIDED ENHANCED PORTABLE NAVIGATION,” and is incorporated by reference in its entirety.

To illustrate an exemplary embodiment, one suitable relationship between the functional blocks implemented by server 120 is shown in FIG. 3. Navigation solutions derived by navigation module 120 corresponding to a plurality of sensor epochs over a first time period are fed to input hander 140 at subsequent time. Input handler 140 may provide operations on the navigation solutions to facilitate their use by position estimator 134 and/or hypothesis analyzer 130. Map handler 138 may feed map information corresponding to an area corresponding to the navigation solutions to position estimator 134 and/or hypothesis analyzer 136. As will be described below, the map information may be preformatted in a form usable by position estimator 134 and/or hypothesis analyzer 136 or map handler 140 may perform additional operations to organize and/or process map information to present it in a suitable form. Anchor point manager 142 may perform operations to correlate one or more known locations with one or more of the navigation solutions.

Accordingly, the navigation solutions provided by navigation module 120 of portable device 100 may be processed preliminarily to improve their usability during the offline map matching routine, such as by input hander 140. As schematically shown in FIG. 4, input handler 140 may include filter 400, motion segment categorizer 402 and/or motion characterizer 404. Input hander receives the navigation solutions derived by navigation module 120 as inputs.

The input heading from the navigation solution provided by navigation module 120 may be expected to be the platform heading, and may be derived from the difference between the device heading and an estimated misalignment angle. In some situations, this derived platform heading from the navigation solution may exhibit a periodic heading oscillation or a sine-wave like heading undulations, depending on the use case of portable device. The use case is a characterization of the type of interaction between a portable device and the user, and may include whether the user is carrying the device, holding the device with a swinging arm or “dangling,” positioning it “on ear” when talking, inputting data or viewing in a navigation or testing operation, carrying the device in a pocket or other container or holder, and other usages of the device that affect its orientation with respect to the user. For example, pocket or dangling use cases may have a periodic motion component. It may be desirable to remove or reduce components of the navigation solutions that may be ascribed to this oscillation. By employing all of the navigation solutions derived over the first time period, a zero-phase low pass filter can be utilized to remove or reduce the effect of the oscillations without introducing unwanted delay into the signals.

In one aspect, it may be desirable to group one or more navigation solutions into similar motion patterns. For example, when the navigation solutions are viewed as representing a trajectory of the user, segments of the trajectory may be categorized as either turns or straight-lines by motion segment categorizer 402. The entrance and exit time of each straight-line and turn segments may be indicated for use by position estimator 134 and/or hypothesis analyzer 136. Further, motion segment categorizer 402 may also determine the shapes of the turn, for example as being U-shaped or L-shaped. Consequently, the turn shape information may be employed by hypothesis analyzer 136 during hypothesis management. Additionally, information from navigation solutions identified as being near a turning period may be taken into consideration to remove false turning induced by fidgeting or short-time misalignment change. Furthermore, if the turn shape cannot be accurately determined due to the occurrence of fidgeting, inaccurate misalignment estimates, gyro drift and etc., an arbitrary turn indicator will be flagged so that the hypothesis analyzer can generate all possible candidates to compensate the uncertainty of the turn shape.

In one aspect, it may desirable to detect one or more navigation solutions that may be associated with a type of motion that may influence the use of the information during offline snap matching. For example, motion characterizer 402 may detect patterns of motion that indicate the device is undergoing non-meaningful motion, such as a user fidgeting with the device. Correspondingly, motion characterizer 402 may be used to detect one or more periods during which some or all motion experienced by the device is non-meaningful or the result of fidgeting and identify the navigation solutions corresponding to such periods. For example, the entrance and exit time of a fidgeting period may be provided to by position estimator 134 and/or hypothesis analyzer 136. Further, information before and after each such periods may be used to improve the identification of non-meaningful motion. In some embodiments, a detected non-meaningful motion period may be used for tracking misalignment to isolate an unintended misalignment change during the non-meaningful motion period. In some embodiments, a detected non-meaningful motion period may be used for compensating the detection of steps in pedestrian dead reckoning techniques, in which the non-meaningful motion may result in the incorrect detection of steps.

As noted, position estimator 134 may utilize the navigation solutions from navigation module 120 as well as results from hypothesis analyzer 136 to generate improved map matched positioning estimates. Hypothesis analyzer 136 uses these position estimates to create, eliminate or combine hypotheses for the next epoch. Position estimator 134 maintains all the possible map matched candidates and generates their corresponding positioning estimates. Position estimator 134 may use any one or combination of filters to obtain the position estimates, including without limitation Kalman filters, unscented Kalman filters, particle filters and the like. Different system and measurement models can be also used according to the applications, for example: prediction only, near constant velocity and others. These models may employ different techniques to propagate the position of portable device 100 and to use navigation solution outputs as measurement updates. Representative system and measurement models are described in the following materials, but other variations may be employed. Position estimator 134 may output an updated position, which may also include velocity and/or heading information that is a combination of the hypotheses. For example, the combination may be a weighted average. The weights used in combining the hypotheses may be adaptively tuned according to the empirical or topological models. For example, the weighting can be adjusted based on the number of hypotheses and/or uncertainty of the position estimates. The updated position from the combination of hypotheses represents map aided information and may be used to provide an enhanced navigation solution. Furthermore, map entity information that may be associated with a given navigation solution is also beneficial to improve the motion detection associated with that navigation solution. For example, if it can be determined that the user was/is on stairs, patterns of corresponding sensor data may be associated with that motion mode.

Map information may initially be obtained from any suitable source, such as from on-line map service providers. A necessary, the map information may be preprocessed into a form suitable for use by position estimator 134 and/or hypothesis analyzer 136. For example, the map information may be converted into an internal map data structure, where it may be saved into the local storage for future use without the overhead of downloading and processing it again if desired. Accordingly, preprocessing the map information may include the functions of i) converting map information from various map data providers to a unified data structure, ii) preparing the necessary map data structure suitable for map aided algorithms, and/or iii) storing the map information in local storage, such as memory 130 (for embodiments in which offline map matching is performed remotely) or memory 104 (for embodiments in which offline map matching is performed locally).

On-line indoor/outdoor map service providers may provide web Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to access their map database. Accordingly, the corresponding APIs from the map provider may be used to obtain map information for an area encompassing the user's current location. Particularly notable examples of venues that may have corresponding map information include indoor environments such as office buildings, hospitals, malls, conference centers exhibitions, retail stores and the like. This map information may be preprocessed to facilitate its use during offline map matching. For example, the information may be decoded to extract the necessary map data used for techniques of this disclosure using the APIs and converted into a unified format such as the Geographic Javascript Objective Notation (GeoJson) format, although xml files, binary files and others may be used. The converted map data can then be saved in the local storage for the future use. The decoding and conversion may be performed by external resources and delivered in any suitable manner for use during offline map matching. Generally, it is desirable to minimize the number of times preprocessing operations are performed for each venue. For example, the map information may be appropriately formatted for a given venue once and distributed to any number of portable devices to be used in the generation of hypotheses for enhancing a navigation solution within that venue. However, another preprocessing operation may be performed when new information becomes available or when changes to the venue occur.

Furthermore, preprocessing the map information may include segregating it into traversable and non-traversable regions. For example, corridors represent an important class of traversable regions in typical indoor environments. As such, a corridor clipping function may be performed to extract corridor shape information from background entities if the corridor information is not available to present the map information as a polygon based geometric map. Many conventional map service providers do not offer corridor shape information which is important in an indoor map aided algorithm. Therefore, a suitable technique for obtaining the shape of corridors that may be present in the venue may include extracting all the other entities from the background entity. The background entity may be a boundary contour that establishes a given building or level of a building or other venue. Foreground entities include all objects such as shops, elevators, escalators, and other obstacles within the boundary contour. The clipping process as used herein refers to the process of cutting away from a set of 2-dimensional geometric shapes those parts that are outside a particular ‘clipping’ window. This can be achieved by intersecting a subject polygon (background entity) with a clipping polygon (other foreground entities on top of the background entities). The polygons may be defined by a sequence of vertices and any curves may be represented as an appropriate set of line segments.

After iteratively clipping all the other entities from the background, the corridor polygon may be obtained. A suitable clipping algorithms may be configured to accommodate relatively complex polygons with holes, for example, the Vatic clipping algorithm. An illustration of the results of a clipping algorithm are shown in FIG. 5 for a representative polygon based geometric indoor map. The background entity 500 for a portion of the map is represented by a dashed line. Foreground entities represented as polygons with fine lines, such as polygon 502 (the other are not labeled to preserve clarity), are clipped on top of background entity 500. The resulting polygon 504, represented by the heavy line, gives the shape of the corridor. The resulting corridor shape may be represented by a complex polygon. A complex polygon used herein is a polygon (without self-intersection) which has one or multiple holes inside.

As will be described below, some snap entities may provide inherent position information, such as elevators, escalators, stairs that may be associated with level change scenarios or conveyors that may allow the assumption of heading or other position information. The locations of the entrances and exits to the background map entity, as well as doors or other entrances/exits to foreground entities may also be used. Still further, the direction of the entrances/exits may also be used when generating hypotheses. In a multi-level venue, the height of each level may be used with sensor information indicating changes in elevation to help determine when a level change scenario may exist.

In addition, preprocessing may include decomposing one or more shapes of the map entities into small simpler polygons to improve the computation efficiency when used by position estimator 134 and/or hypothesis analyzer 136. A trapezoid decomposition may be used to depose relatively complex polygons into more simple trapezoids, while a convex decomposition may be used to partition relatively complex polygons into more simple convex polygons. An optimal decomposition algorithms may be applied to generate a reduced number of polygons after the decomposition process. Any one or combination of decomposition, methods may be employed.

Preprocessing the map information may also include abstracting the traversable areas of the indoor maps with connected links and nodes. Connected links and nodes may contain both the geometric and the topological information of the map. Therefore, the position estimator 134 and/or hypothesis analyzer 136 may benefit from the topological information to improve generation of the updated estimated position information. As used here, a map constructed from the connected links and nodes may be termed a grid map. Any suitable technique may be used to generate the grid map, such as for example by using a voronoi diagram with possibly some other processing. Another example to generate grid map is by using the geometry of the traversable and non-traversable areas from the map directly together with possibly some of the map entity types. An example grid map is illustrated in FIG. 6. As shown, dots may be used to represent the map nodes, such as dots 600. The dashed lines represent the connected links, such as link 602 between dots 600, and the map entities are represented by the solid polygons, such as 604. A node is the point on the map which has the equal distance to its closest three or more map entities. As with the polygon based geometric maps, the grid map can be preprocessed offline by external processing resources and saved in a map file for subsequent use by position estimator 134 and/or hypothesis analyzer 136 without the need for preprocessing each time updated estimated position in formation is determined.

In one aspect, a grid map may enhance the geometric aspects of map matching as well as providing topological aspects. The topological information from the indoor map may be also applied so improve the reliability and the accuracy of the map matching algorithm. For example, a retail store map may be readily divided into structured areas and non-structured areas. Non-structured areas, such as open space, isolated booths and the like, may benefit from geometric based map matching algorithms techniques as described above. However, structured areas, such as aligned shelves, booths and similar features may be abstracted as connected links and nodes to be used in a grid based map. Further, when a grid map is available, position estimator 134 may be simplified to accumulate travelled distance along the map links rather than to estimate absolute position. Similarly, hypothesis analyzer 136 may also be simplified to operate based on map links.

Both the polygon based geometric map and grid map can be applied to improve the reliability and the accuracy of the updated estimated position information. For example, a retail store map can be readily divided into structured areas and non-structured areas. At those non-structured areas such as open spaces, isolated booths and the like, geometric based techniques described above may be applied. Alternatively or in addition, at structured areas such as aligned shelves or booths, the geometric and topological information may be represented by a grid map. When a grid map is available, a weighted topological algorithm based on the correlation between the trajectory of the user and the topological features may be applied to improve the map matching performance. A number of conditional tests may be applied to eliminate segments that do not fulfill some pre-defined thresholds, which may be obtained from statistical analysis of field test data. When ambiguities exist, new hypothesis may be created to take the user motion uncertainty into consideration. The user motion uncertainty may include accumulated step length uncertainty and/or user heading uncertainty. Therefore, multiple hypotheses may be running in parallel for certain period of time, with unlikely hypotheses removed upon being assigned low weightings. As noted above, the anchor point information may also be used to remove unlikely hypotheses.

Accordingly, map handler 138 may function to load previously stored, preprocessed map information, which may include clipped and decomposed map information together with the original map information as described above. Map handler 138 may access map information that is already formatted in a manner to facilitate the generation of position hypotheses for portable device 100 and may retrieve the information as needed. From the preprocessed map information, map handler 138 initializes the internal map data structure, which may include the map projection parameters, geometric shapes, identifications (IDs) and type information of all the entities in the map. The projection parameters, for example the six-parameter affine transformation, can be used to transform between the coordinates in the map and in the latitude and longitude. The entity types describe the functions of the particular entities such as background, unit, escalator, elevator, stairs and etc. Both the shape and type information may be used by hypothesis analyzer 136. Map handler 138 may also organize the map geometric information in a spatial database so that an efficient search algorithm may be applied to query a point of interest or range of interest in the map. For example, an R-tree structure may be used for efficient and fast search of map entities. As will be appreciated, an R-tree search algorithm may locate a given point in the map and return a pointer to the corresponding map entity.

Although described in the context of being performed by external processing resources, any or all of the functions associated with preprocessing map information may be performed by map handler 138 as desired.

Outputs from both position estimator 134 and map handler 138 may be fed into hypothesis analyzer 136. Notably, position estimator 134 may provide estimated position information in the form of position and variance estimates used to define an error region. Hypothesis analyzer 136 superimposes or projects the error region on the processed map to identify the possible entities in which the user is travelling. Hypothesis analyzer 136 maintains, creates, eliminates and combines the hypotheses based on any suitable decision making logics, including those described below. Hypothesis analyzer 136 may also assign weights for all currently available hypotheses based on topological and empirical information. Those weights can be used to combine or eliminate hypotheses as well as to combine the hypotheses, such as by generating a weighted average to update the estimated position.

As indicated by FIG. 3, output from anchor point manager 142 may also be fed to hypotheses analyzer 130 for use in generating, deleting and otherwise managing hypotheses. Anchor point manager 142 may identify one or more objects, structural features or other map entities, such as a point of sale, that have a known, fixed location and may be associated with one or more navigation solutions provided by navigation module 120. When relative timing information is available for a plurality of anchor points, they may be considered to be ordered and hypotheses analyzer 136 may constrain hypothesis to those that satisfy the order. When relative timing information is not available, it may be assumed that the user was at the anchor point location, so hypotheses may be validated based upon whether they produce a trajectory incorporating the anchor point. A collection of anchor points without timing information, may be considered unordered. For anchor points in which some have timing information and other do not, or when there are timing errors, they may be considered imperfectly ordered. Hypotheses analyzer 136 may use all of these types of anchor points as provided by anchor point manger 142 to different degrees. For example, ordered anchor points may be used to create one or more hypotheses. Additionally, any type of anchor point may be used to prune or assess already generated hypotheses. Hypothesis analyzer 136 may use the position of the anchor point and a predefined uncertainty circle as decision criteria to delete all hypotheses outside the uncertainty circle. In addition, a hypothesis may be corrected with an updated position for hypotheses that may be within the uncertainty circle, but separated by a structure such as room or corridor. Furthermore, since the anchor point information can be used to efficiently remove the unlikely hypotheses, more hypotheses may be created to accommodate various user motion uncertainties to improve the successful rate of map matching. In certain cases, the ordering of anchor points may contains errors. Therefore, hypothesis analyzer 136 may be configured to identify any outliers and isolate them as incorrectly ordered anchor points. For example, if large discrepancy exists, a trial and error based searching mechanism may be used to reorder the anchor points in a more reasonable way. If ambiguities of the ordering cannot be resolved, they may be excluded from the hypothesis analysis so that they do not have negative impact on the final solution.

The techniques of this disclosure include the use of navigation solutions that were derived over a period of time to subsequently enhance at least one of the navigation solutions. Accordingly, for a given sensor epoch, hypothesis analyzer 136 may have information available from future as well as previous epochs. As will be appreciated, a number of benefits may flow from this feature. Hypotheses analyzer 136 may maintain a history of any or all of the hypotheses history, including generating, trimming or deleting hypotheses allowing management of the hypotheses to be propagated forwards as well as backwards to improve accuracy. Similarly, hypothesis analyzer 136 has access to future navigation solutions, so that management of hypotheses for a given epoch can benefit from future as well as past information. For example, different management strategies may be used for straight-line as opposed to turning segments, but accurate detection of those segments may be significantly improved when considering a trajectory as a whole. Further, since there is no need to provide a “current” navigation solution, no buffer and 4 delay mechanism is required. As another example, information over the entire period may be used to adjust step length scale factors based on the various scenario that may be detected for the trajectory. Additionally, hypotheses analyzer 136 may assign weight to hypotheses based on the similarities of the trajectory shapes between the navigation solutions and the enhanced navigation solutions provided through offline map matching.

In one aspect, hypotheses analyzer 136 may use both forward and backward processed data to improve the performance of the system as noted. This may be especially helpful for a long trajectory when the positioning information toward the end of the trajectory is available, such as form an anchor point like a checkout point or store exit. A backward processed enhanced navigation solution may significantly reduce be accumulated error that may otherwise occur. Furthermore, more reliable misalignment estimates may be obtained.

In some embodiments, derivation of the navigation solutions, such as by navigation module 120, may include forward processing of sensor data first to generate a forward navigation solution. An optional pre-run of the sensor data may be applied to obtain sensor bias estimates. Furthermore, the pre-run may also be used to obtain the piecewise misalignment estimates which can be further smoothed and applied in forward and/or backward processes later. As such, the pre-run may improve the overall performance of the forward and backward sensor navigation solution especially during period(s) of fidgeting. Backward processing may use the inverted sensor data as the input and the forward exit point as the initial starting point, enabling the same positioning engine to be applied as in forward processing. Removing any identified initial fidgeting period(s) at the beginning or the end may improve the reliability of the alignment process.

The forward and backward sensor navigation solutions may be used to improve the performance map matching solution in any suitable manner. For example, the offline may matching routing may first process the forward and backward sensor navigation solution respectively. The final map matched navigation solution may be generated using both the forward and backward map matched solutions. During a solution merging process, the overlapping map link history of hypothesis trees from the forward and backward map match processes may be identified first. The common map links in both forward and backward solutions may then be added to the candidate list. Correspondingly, each candidate in the candidate list may be used as a starting point to iterate hypothesis trees. The best candidate branches for the forward and backward respectively may be merged together to provide the final navigation solution. It is noted that a common map link can be either a link on which an anchor point resides or a normal link in the trajectory history.

The forward and backward sensor solutions may also be combined and smoothed first, such as for example using a two filter smoother or a multiple pass smoother. Moreover, a Rauch-Tung-Striebel (RTS) smoother or any other suitable smoothing filter or any backward smoothing techniques may be employed. In some embodiments, the offline map matching routines of this disclosure may use the smoothed sensor navigation solution as the input to perform may matching. Alternatively, a simplified smoothing technique using the weighted average of step length estimates from the forward and backward sensor navigation solutions may be used. Since map matching mainly uses the relative positioning information, weighted step length estimates not only reduce the computation load, they also provide significant benefits during smoothing processes. Alternatively, a simplified combining technique for forward and backward using the weighted average of the relative position changes from the forward and backward sensor navigation solutions may be used.

In one aspect, an initial enhanced navigation solution may represent a position gap with respect to navigation solutions from adjacent epochs. Any gaps may be smoothed using suitable techniques, such as by recalculating a determined trajectory. For example, the recalculation may employ an estimated user step-length scale factor. The step length scale factor may updated from segment to segment so that after smoothing, no unreasonable position jumps exist in the map matched enhanced navigation solution(s). While smoothing may not necessarily improve the overall accuracy or success rate, it nevertheless may provide a more useful presentation of the position information.

Hypothesis analyzer 136 as noted maintains, creates, deletes and combines hypotheses. A hypothesis refers to a possible location of user with any desired corresponding attributes, such as position, velocity, heading, motion mode, position variance, occupied map entity and the like. The decision making logic applied to the various hypotheses may be selected based on the user operational scenarios as indicated in the following examples.

Many implementations of a decision making logic for hypothesis management employ the concept of an error region. As will be appreciated, the error region represents an uncertainty of the possible position(s) of portable device 100 determined by position estimator 134. As desired, an error region may define a rectangle, a circle, an ellipse, an arbitrary polygon or any other shape. If the Kalman is used with position estimator 134, an “error ellipse” may be used. The parameters of an error ellipse include the semi-major axis length (a) and semi-minor axis length (b), and orientation (a) may be derived from the covariance matrix of the Kalman filter and the predefined confidence level. For example, a 95% confidence level may be used to reasonably cover the position uncertainty, although other values may be employed depending on the desired performance characteristics. Correspondingly, the error ellipse parameters may be given by Equation (1):

$\begin{matrix} {{a = \sqrt{5.991\lambda_{1}}}{b = \sqrt{5.991\lambda_{2}}}{\alpha = {\tan^{- 1}\frac{v_{1}(y)}{v_{1}(x)}}}} & (1) \end{matrix}$

where λ₁ and λ₂ represent the eigenvalues of the covariance matrix and v₁ represents the eigenvector of the covariance matrix with the largest eigenvalue. In order to reduce the computation load, the error ellipse may be approximated by a polygon with several vertices, such as 32 vertices, evenly distributed around the edge of the ellipse.

If the particle filter is used, the samples of the position estimates approximate the error region. However, the error ellipse or other region is still required in hypothesis analyzer 136 to combine and eliminate hypotheses. Therefore, the covariance matrix may be derived from the position sample data. Then the parameters of the error ellipse may be calculated as in the Kalman filter mode. To illustrate, FIG. 7 shows an example of an error ellipse derived from a particle filter using 95% confidence level. The “+” symbols indicate the vertices of the approximated error ellipse 700.

In reference to the context of an error region, various decision making logic approaches may be applied for managing the hypotheses. A first example corresponds to a scenario with a wall crossing event. Each hypothesis may have its own occupation field to indicate the current map entity associated with portable device 100. As shown in FIG. 8, position estimator 134 uses the error region superimposed on the map layout to obtain the candidate hypotheses. If no overlapping area between the error region and map entities other than the currently occupied entity is detected, hypothesis analyzer 136 need not perform any further operations. However when the error region intersects with multiple map entities, the attributes of the intersected entities are inserted into an intersection table. The overlapping detection can be fulfilled by iteratively checking the location of vertices from the approximate polygon for the error ellipse. The spatial search algorithm, for example, an R-tree search and point-in-polygon algorithms, may be applied to find the map entity for each vertex of the error ellipse. If all the vertices are on the same map entity as the current hypothesis's occupation, no overlapping is declared. Otherwise, a new hypothesis candidate will be added to the intersection list. It is noted that each hypothesis maintains its own intersection list. The current hypothesis may be called the parent hypothesis whereas all the candidate hypotheses may be called children hypotheses.

If the intersection area is over a suitable threshold, such as approximately 10% of the total area of the error ellipse, the new hypothesis candidate may be subjected to further analysis, otherwise it will be removed from the intersection list. Hypothesis analyzer 136 may then analyze all the candidates in the intersection list different than the occupation of the current hypothesis. The initial position of the new candidate hypothesis is given by the current position estimate from position estimator 134. However, if this point is not in the range of the overlapping polygon, the centroidal moments of the overlapping polygon may be used as the initial position of new hypothesis instead.

Subsequently, a wall crossing detection may be performed. The logics of the wall crossing event are based on whether the room door information is available. If door information is available, the algorithm may evaluate the distance between the candidate hypothesis's initial position and the door's position as schematically indicated in FIG. 9. If the distance is within a predefined threshold, such as 2 meters, a wall crossing event may be declared. The center position of the room door may then be used as the initial position of the new candidate hypothesis. Next a validation check may be performed to determine whether the initial point of the new hypothesis, is within the range of other current available hypotheses. Subsequent operations may be adjusted depending on the particular implementation. When using a particle filter, for example, a new hypothesis may be created with all the particles residing in the new map entity and added to the hypothesis list. All other attributes, except the position of the newly created hypothesis, may be inherited from the parent hypothesis. When using a Kalman filter, for example, no new hypothesis creation and/or eliminate are performed and the position and occupation fields of the parent hypothesis may be updated.

If the room door information is not available, the angle between the intersection edge of the error ellipse and the map entity of the interest, and the user's heading may indicate the possibility the user may enter into the new entity as schematically indicated in FIG. 10. If the heading of the current hypothesis is nearly parallel to the edge of the room, this intersection may result from a skewed navigation solution. In this case, if the overlapping area is above a suitable value, such as approximately 45%, a new hypothesis with an offset of a predefined amount, such as approximately 0.5 meter, from the intersection point is created and the parent hypothesis is deleted. On the other hand, if the overlapping area is below the predefined amount (and optionally if the yaw dynamics of the user are small), the orientation of the intersection edge may be used to update the heading of the parent hypothesis. If the heading of the current hypothesis is approximately perpendicular to the edge of the wall, a possible wall-crossing event is declared. Correspondingly, a similar process as when room door information is available may be performed.

Hypothesis analyzer 136 also checks the transition of the occupations of hypotheses. It is assumed that a user can freely enter and exit a corridor. However, between-unit crossing is prohibited or assigned with minimum weight to reflect the fact that it is uncommon to have doors between shops. In addition, hypothesis analyzer 136 may also assign the weights of hypotheses based on this transition model or empirical model.

Another exemplary decision logic for managing hypotheses may be applied when a level change event may be associated with one or more sensor epochs. If a user was/is going up or down stairs, taking an elevator or escalator, navigation module 120 and/or hypothesis analyzer 136 may perform a routine to detect a corresponding motion mode and/or context indicator to identity the current user motion mode/context (such as elevator, stairs, walking, walking on escalator, or standing on escalator). When a level change event was/is detected, hypothesis analyzer 136 may use a navigation solution corresponding to the sensor epoch to search for map entities in the map information, such as stairs, elevator or escalator entrances, that are sufficiently the detected mode. For example, if an elevator mode was/is detected from the navigation solution, hypothesis analyzer 136 may search for a nearby elevator entrance on the map. If the entrance is within certain distance from the current user position, hypothesis analyzer 136 may transition from a normal state to a level change state to apply a corresponding decision logic. The distance threshold may be 10 m as a non-limiting example. Further, the selected value can be tuned according to the accuracy of the navigation solution.

In conjunction with detection of a level change event, hypothesis analyzer 136 may transition from a normal state to a level change state to adjust its operation. If desired, a validation process may be performed to avoid a level change false alarm. During the process, hypothesis analyzer 136 may propagate the user position initially using techniques similar to the normal state. The validation process may use a height difference above a threshold, such as 2.0 m as a non-limiting example, the transition to level change state may be validated. Otherwise, the detection may be treated as a false alarm, resulting in a return to the normal state.

Given successful validation of the level change, hypothesis analyzer 136 may eliminate all hypotheses and create a new hypothesis using the identified level change entrance information. The initial position of the hypothesis and/or heading may be established by the entrance position of the corresponding map entity. Map information corresponding to the new level may then be used, such that the new level is identified by as above or below the previous level according to the sign of the height difference. Subsequently, the state of hypothesis analyzer 136 may transition to a finalizing state. If the validation process failed, the state goes back to the normal state.

In the finalizing state, hypothesis analyzer 136 may consider whether navigation module 120 detected a motion mode for the associated navigation solution, or whether hypothesis analyzer detected a motion mode. If a walking status was/is detected, hypothesis analyzer 136 may reset the position of the corresponding hypothesis to the exit position of the level change entity and revert to normal state as schematically depicted in FIG. 11. Hypothesis 1100 may correspond to the position estimate provided by the navigation solution, while hypothesis 1102 may reflect the updated position estimate based on the assumption of exiting elevator 1104. Otherwise, hypothesis analyzer 136 may continue propagating the user position. It is noted that the algorithm does not reset the heading of the hypothesis according to the level change entity layout after exiting it. This is because the user heading may already have changed due to the detection delay of the motion mode if relying on a determination from navigation module 120. As shown in FIG. 11, the door of the elevator is on the right side (0°), however, the user heading is around −90° after exiting the elevator.

In addition to the motion modes and/or context awareness scenarios discussed earlier (such as when a user goes up or down stairs, takes elevators or escalators), some other motion modes and/or contests such as walking or standing on a conveyor (moving walkway), walking near an wireless beacon or other wireless radio frequency (RF) tags and the like may be used to adjust operation of hypothesis analyzer 136. When the system autonomously detects such motion modes or context awareness scenarios, the map information techniques presented herein can relate those to map entities. Benefits of this implementation include: (i) hypothesis analyzer 136 may detect a motion mode/context that relates to a map entity and may enhance the navigation solution (particularly position and optionally heading) to the location of the map entity; (ii) hypothesis analyzer 136 may receive a map entity that implies a motion mode and/or context, which may be used to aid recognition of sensor data patterns associated with the implied motion mode.

For example, when it is determined a user was/is walking/standing on a conveyor, hypothesis analyzer 136 may search for a nearby conveyor in the map information. When a nearby conveyor is found, a new hypothesis may be created with the entrance of the conveyor as the initial position and the orientation of the conveyor as the initial heading, eliminating all the other hypotheses. A similar process to that applied regarding a level change event when a user steps out of the conveyor. This context based 2D position adjustment may reduce the accumulated error from PDR and thus improves the enhanced navigation solution of the offline map matching. On the other hand, when a hypothesis's error region is on top of a particular map entity such as a conveyor, an elevator or an escalator, hypothesis analyzer 136 may base detection of the corresponding motion mode on this information to increase the sensitivity of the particular detection and improve the success rate.

A similar process may be applied to a walking/driving motion mode detection scenario when a user is identified on a parking lot. For example, if the hypothesized position is on top of a parking lot, this information can be fed to the navigation system to improve the sensitivity of the driving/walking detection module.

Another exemplary scenario involves updates from a witless beacon or RF tags. If the entrance of a shop or information desk is equipped with wireless beacon or RF tags, the portable device may receive the information from these wireless tags when it is sufficiently close. In this case, the position of the shop entrance or information desk can be used to update the position of the hypotheses.

The input heading from the navigation solution provided by navigation module 130 may be expected to be the platform heading, and may be derived from the difference between the device heading and an estimated misalignment angle. As noted above, this derived platform heading from the navigation solution may exhibit a periodic heading oscillation, depending on the use case of portable device. When navigation solutions are processed subsequently according to the techniques of this disclosure, a zero-phase low pass filter may be utilized, to remove or reduce the effect of the oscillations without introducing unwanted delay into the signals. An exemplary result of removing heading oscillation is schematically illustrated in FIG. 12, with the results of the navigation solution alone indicated by trace 1200 and the enhanced navigation solution following low pass filtering indicted by trace 1202.

As desired, hypotheses generated for one or more sensor epochs may be stored, for example by storing generated multiple hypotheses comprises relating hypotheses to each other. The stored generated multiple hypotheses based at least in part on the relations. For example, to manage the hypotheses in a flexible way, a tree based hypothesis creation, trimming, merging and deleting method may be applied. Each hypothesis may preserve all the history during the first period of sensor epochs. The history may include the positioning information, the hypothesis statistics information and the hypothesis management information. Any or all the may be used to weight the hypothesis. The proposed architecture may also reduce the memory usage of the hypothesis data structure. Since all the history information may be preserved in the hypothesis data structure, a large number of hypotheses is large may represent significant storage requirements. A tree-based architecture may share commonalities of history information and present memory usage efficiencies. As noted, a hypothesis weighting scheme may be used with the tree based architecture. With the ability to trace the parent and children hypotheses, the weighting may be calculated information at the current epoch as well as previous and future information. This may improve the accuracy and reliability of the weighting scheme. A tree-based hypothesis management system may enable manipulating hypotheses in a more flexible way, and may be of particular use for map matching with the anchor points of interest that may be associated with navigation solutions separated from the current epoch. A new hypothesis may be readily created using the anchor points' information with all the history preserved. In one suitable implementation of a tree-based hypothesis data structure, each hypothesis may employ a unique ID, a pointer to its parent hypothesis, and a pointer array to children hypothesis. The root hypothesis may have no parent pointer and the end hypothesis may have no children hypothesis pointers.

At the end of the map matching process, a hypothesis trimming mechanism may be applied to eliminate any unreasonable hypotheses, based on any suitable criteria. For example, the positions of the final hypotheses may be expected to be within a certain range of exit points. Hypotheses which are beyond a given threshold from an exit point may be trimmed, along with any parent branches. Further, when anchor points are available, hypothesis branches that do not pass those anchor points may be removed from the hypothesis tree. Still further, similarity between the sensor based navigation solutions and the enhanced navigation solutions provided by the offline map matching, may be also used as a criterion to remove unlikely hypothesis branches.

Due to the uncertainty of the sensor navigation solution, the enhanced navigation solutions may have many routes which pass any identified anchor points. The offline map matching routine may identify an appropriate solution or solutions from any candidates. The final solution may be selected using any combination of criteria, including: 1) the shape of the enhanced navigation solutions trajectory may resemble trajectory of the navigation solutions, such as provided by navigation module 120; and/or 2) the enhanced navigation solutions may pass all anchor points in the correct order. As will be appreciated, a longer trajectory may result in a greater number of possible routes. In order to compensate for exponentially increasing possibilities of routes that may undesirably consume processing and memory resource, a Fast Hypothesis Search algorithm may be applied to optimize the search strategy by properly caching useful search information, and therefore may be able to search for optimized solutions with reduced resource consumption.

As noted above, position estimator 134 may utilize the navigation solutions and the results from hypothesis analyzer 136 to generate the improved positioning estimates aided by map information. Hypothesis analyzer 136 uses these position estimates to create, eliminate or combine hypotheses for another epoch.

Although described primarily in the context of geometric map information, the above techniques may be used, alternatively or in addition, with map information represented as a grid map. For example, the user position may be projected into the connected links and nodes by using the position-to-curve or curve-to-curve matching. The two techniques may be combined to ease implementation and maintenance. The grid map may also be used to assist the hypothesis analyzer 136 to derive more reliable hypotheses by using a weighted topological algorithm based on the correlation between the trajectory of the user and the topological features of the grid map. Any suitable conditional test or tests may be applied to eliminate segments that do not fulfill pre-defined thresholds, which may be obtained from a statistical analysis of field test data. As with the geometric techniques, when ambiguities exist, multiple hypotheses may be generated to take the user motion uncertainty into consideration. For example, user motion uncertainty may be caused by accumulated step length error, user heading error and others. As such, multiple hypotheses may be running in parallel for a certain period of time. The unlikely hypotheses with low weightings may be removed. Furthermore, with the grid map, an improved hypothesis weighting scheme may be employed by analyzing the hypothesis's topological history. An improved uncertainty estimate may be calculated using the weighted average of all the hypotheses' information. Therefore, a more accurate user position uncertainty estimate may be obtained.

Various filters, and/or measurement models may be used to update the position of hypotheses according to the techniques of this disclosure. The four exemplary methods described below employ a prediction only Kalman filter, a near constant velocity Kalman filter, a prediction only particle filter and a near constant velocity particle filter, although other filters and/or models may be employed as desired.

As a first example employing a prediction only Kalman filter, outputs from the integrated navigation solution provided by navigation module 120 may be used to predict system states for all currently available hypotheses. Three states may be used as the system states for each hypothesis, including the position error (δx, δy) in the map coordinates and the heading error δψ. Further dX_(x) represents the system states for the n-th hypothesis, the position and heading error may both be modeled as random walk as indicated by Equation (2):

dX _(n) =[δx δy δψ] ^(T)  (2)

As such, one form of the system models can be derived as shown in Equation (3):

$\begin{matrix} {\begin{bmatrix} {\delta \; \overset{.}{x}} \\ {\delta \; \overset{.}{y}} \\ {\delta \overset{.}{\psi}} \end{bmatrix} = {{\begin{bmatrix} 0 & 0 & {{- \sin}\; {\psi \cdot L}} \\ 0 & 0 & {\cos \; {\psi \cdot L}} \\ 0 & 0 & 0 \end{bmatrix}\begin{bmatrix} {\delta \; x} \\ {\delta \; y} \\ {\delta\psi} \end{bmatrix}} + \begin{bmatrix} {\cos \; {\psi \cdot w_{L}}} \\ {\sin \; {\psi \cdot w_{L}}} \\ w_{\psi} \end{bmatrix}}} & (3) \end{matrix}$

where, ψ is the user heading; L is the step length, which can be obtained by calculating the displacement between two positions in adjacent epochs from the navigation solution; ω_(L) is the driving noise of the step length; and ω_(v) is the driving noise of the heading error.

It is noted that the position and step length may be calculated in the map coordinate frame. The position in latitude and longitude may be transformed into the map frame using affine transformation. The transformation matrix has six parameters, which can be obtained from the imported map data. No measurement update need be used in the prediction only method.

Thus, the propagation of the system states may be given by Equation (4):

$\begin{matrix} {\begin{bmatrix} {\overset{\sim}{x}}_{k + 1} \\ {\overset{\sim}{y}}_{k + 1} \\ {\overset{\sim}{\psi}}_{k + 1} \end{bmatrix} = \begin{bmatrix} {{\hat{x}}_{k} + {\cos \; {{\overset{\sim}{\psi}}_{k + 1} \cdot L_{k + 1}}}} \\ {{\hat{x}}_{k} + {\sin \; {{\overset{\sim}{\psi}}_{k + 1} \cdot L_{k + 1}}}} \\ {{\hat{\psi}}_{k} + {\Delta\psi}_{k + 1}} \end{bmatrix}} & (4) \end{matrix}$

where, k and k+1 represent two consecutive epochs, the “{tilde over ( )}” represents the predicted value, and “̂” represents the best estimated value, the Δψ_(k+1) represents the heading increment from the integrated solution in the current epoch.

As a second example employing a near constant velocity hypothesis model, outputs from navigation module 120 are used as pseudo measurements to update the system states for all the available hypotheses. The system may be modeled as a velocity random walk. The system states for the n-th hypothesis are the same as those in the prediction only model. The velocity error may be modeled as random walk, random constant or a first-order Gaussian-Markov process. An exemplary system model using velocity random walk is given by Equation (5) as follows:

$\begin{matrix} {\begin{bmatrix} {\delta \; \overset{.}{x}} \\ {\delta \; \overset{.}{y}} \\ {\delta \; \overset{.}{x}} \\ {\delta \; \overset{.}{y}} \end{bmatrix} = {{\begin{bmatrix} 0 & 0 & 1 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \end{bmatrix}\begin{bmatrix} {\delta \; x} \\ {\delta \; y} \\ {\delta \; \overset{.}{x}} \\ {\delta \; \overset{.}{y}} \end{bmatrix}} + \begin{bmatrix} 0 \\ 0 \\ w_{vx} \\ w_{vy} \end{bmatrix}}} & (5) \end{matrix}$

where, δx is the velocity error in the x-direction in the map coordinates; δy is the velocity error in the y-direction in the map coordinates; ω_(vx) is the driving noise for the x-axis velocity error; ω_(vy) is the driving noise for the y-axis velocity error;

Correspondingly, the propagation of the system may be given by Equation (6):

$\begin{matrix} {\begin{bmatrix} {\overset{\sim}{x}}_{k + 1} \\ {\overset{\sim}{y}}_{k + 1} \\ {\overset{\sim}{\overset{.}{x}}}_{k + 1} \\ {\overset{\sim}{\overset{.}{y}}}_{k + 1} \end{bmatrix} = \begin{bmatrix} {{\hat{x}}_{k} + {\hat{\overset{.}{x}}}_{k}} \\ {{\hat{y}}_{k} + {\hat{\overset{.}{y}}}_{k}} \\ {\hat{\overset{.}{x}}}_{k} \\ {\hat{\overset{.}{y}}}_{k} \end{bmatrix}} & (6) \end{matrix}$

As will be appreciated, the predicted position may be obtained by the best estimated velocity from the last epoch, and the predicted velocity may be constant from the previous epoch, i.e. a “constant velocity” model.

Since the position from navigation module 120 may be used as the measurement update, the measurement model may be expressed as Equation (7):

$\begin{matrix} {{\delta \; Z} = {\begin{bmatrix} {\overset{\sim}{x} - x_{TPN}} \\ {\overset{\sim}{y} - t_{TPN}} \end{bmatrix} = {{\begin{bmatrix} 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 \end{bmatrix}\begin{bmatrix} {\delta \; x} \\ {\delta \; y} \\ {\delta \; \overset{.}{x}} \\ {\delta \; \overset{.}{y}} \end{bmatrix}} + \begin{bmatrix} v_{x} \\ v_{y} \end{bmatrix}}}} & (7) \end{matrix}$

where δZ is the measurement misclosure; {tilde over (x)} and {tilde over (y)} are the propagated position; x_(1PS) and y_(1PN) are the projected position updates from the navigation solution; and ν_(x) and ν_(y) are the measurement noise.

It is noted that the measurement noise may be adaptively tuned based on the position accuracy and the user's dynamics from the navigation solution. For example, when a user is walking in a straight line (small yaw dynamics), the measurement noise can be tuned higher so that the system relies more on the prediction and when turning, the measurement noise tuned lower to place more weight on the measurement.

A third example employing a prediction only particle filter may use a set of sample states or particles {x_(i) ^([i])} to approximate the posterior density functions (pdfs) of the states of interest. Here, each x_(i) ^([i]) is a concrete state sample for index i ranging from 1 to M, the size of the particle filter. Thus example may be used for non-Gaussian, multi-model pdfs. Its multi-hypothesis nature makes it also suitable for indoor navigation with map aiding. Similar to the Kalman filters, a particle filter also has prediction and update states. The prediction only particle filter need only employ a prediction state.

The state of the prediction only particle filter may be the position and heading of the user. During an initialization process, the M random samples are drawn according to the navigation solution's position and variance. The prediction is performed by the system model as indicated by Equation (8):

$\begin{matrix} {\begin{bmatrix} x_{k + 1}^{i} \\ y_{k + 1}^{i} \\ \psi_{k + 1}^{i} \end{bmatrix} = {\begin{bmatrix} x_{k}^{i} \\ y_{k}^{i} \\ \psi_{k}^{i} \end{bmatrix} + \begin{bmatrix} {L_{k + 1}\cos \; \psi_{k}^{i}} \\ {L_{k + 1}\sin \; \psi_{k}^{i}} \\ {\Delta\psi}_{k + 1} \end{bmatrix} + \begin{bmatrix} {v_{L}^{i}\cos \; \psi_{k}^{i}} \\ {v_{L}^{i}\sin \; \psi_{k}^{i}} \\ v_{\psi}^{i} \end{bmatrix}}} & (8) \end{matrix}$

where ν_(l) is the driving noise of step length, which can be modeled as Gaussian noise with the variance of σ_(i) ²; and ν_(v) is the driving noise of the user heading, which can be also modeled as Gaussian noise with the variance of σ_(i) ².

It is noted that when new hypothesis is created by hypothesis analyzer 136, new samples will be added to the current sample set according to the uncertainty of the created new hypothesis. Similarly, when a particular hypothesis is eliminated, its corresponding samples may be removed from the sample set.

A fourth example employing a near constant velocity particle filter may use a similar concept as the near constant velocity multi-hypothesis Kalman filter, with system states corresponding to the user position and velocity. An exemplary system model is given by Equation (9):

$\begin{matrix} {\begin{bmatrix} x_{k + 1}^{i} \\ y_{k + 1}^{i} \\ {\overset{.}{x}}_{k + 1}^{i} \\ {\overset{.}{y}}_{k + 1}^{i} \end{bmatrix} = {\begin{bmatrix} x_{k}^{i} \\ y_{k}^{i} \\ {\overset{.}{x}}_{k}^{i} \\ {\overset{.}{y}}_{k}^{i} \end{bmatrix} + \begin{bmatrix} {\overset{.}{x}}_{k + 1}^{i} \\ {\overset{.}{y}}_{k + 1}^{i} \\ 0 \\ 0 \end{bmatrix} + \begin{bmatrix} 0 \\ 0 \\ w_{x}^{i} \\ w_{y}^{i} \end{bmatrix}}} & (9) \end{matrix}$

where the driving noise of the velocity can be modeled as Gaussian nose with the variance of σ_(v) ². The measurement equation may be the same as that for the near constant velocity multi-hypothesis Kalman filter.

In one aspect, the positioning accuracy of the an enhanced navigation solution provided by the offline map matching techniques of this disclosure may be expressed as a user position uncertainty, such as by an error ellipse. A variety of factors may be used to determine the uncertainly, including user motion uncertainty from in the navigation solutions, the number of the hypotheses created at for the epoch of the enhanced navigation solutions, the status of the hypothesis at that epoch, relative proximity of any anchor points, map entities corresponding to the enhanced navigation solution or others. For example, the user motion uncertainty may be obtained direct from navigation solution of navigation module 120. Further, uncertainty may be seen to have a direct correlation with the number of active associated hypotheses. When determining uncertainty, hypothesis status may include age, weighting and the like. As noted above, techniques using a grid map may facilitate determining appropriate weights for hypotheses, allowing an uncertainty estimate to be calculated using the weighted average of all the hypotheses' information.

In one aspect, the uncertainty may be inversely related to the hypothesis age such that a newer hypothesis may be considered more uncertain than an older hypothesis that presumably has survived management operations.

To help illustrate benefits of the techniques of this disclosure, field tests were performed to evaluate the performance of enhancing a navigation solution with offline map information. During the field test, smartphones were used in various use cases, including handheld mode and pocket mode, and used to derive navigation solutions over varying periods of time. Subsequently, the offline map matching techniques of this disclosure were applied to provide enhanced navigation solutions. The navigation solutions derived in real time by the analog of navigation module 120 are represented as outlined trajectories, the enhanced navigation solutions provided by the offline map matching are represented as black trajectories and the actual paths taken by the users are represented by cross hatched trajectories. The pins indicate anchor points, with an order given in parentheses. The tests were conducted at a retail venue for FIGS. 13-26.

In FIG. 13, the smartphone was handheld and the trajectory obtained over a five minute period. In this depletion, the enhanced navigation solution trajectory overlays the reference trajectory, so that deviations are indicated by the cross hatched portions. In FIG. 14, the smartphone was handheld and the trajectory obtained over a ten minute period. In this depiction, the reference trajectory overlays the enhanced navigation solution trajectory, so that deviations are indicated by the black portions. In FIG. 15, the smartphone was handheld and the trajectory obtained over a fifteen minute period. In this depiction, the reference trajectory overlays the enhanced navigation solution trajectory, so that deviations are indicated by the black portions. In FIG. 16, the smartphone was in pocket mode and the trajectory obtained over a twenty minute period. In this depiction, the reference trajectory overlays the enhanced navigation solution trajectory, so that deviations are indicated by the black portions. In FIG. 17, the smartphone was handheld and the trajectory obtained over a twenty minute period. In this depiction, the reference trajectory overlays the enhanced navigation solution trajectory, so that deviations are indicated by the black portions. As will be appreciated, the trajectory corresponding to the enhanced navigation solutions more accurately reflected the true trajectory of the user. Further, the greater time periods, such as indicated by FIGS. 14-17, the trajectory corresponding to the navigation solutions was subject to increasing deviation, reflecting the inherent drift of inertial sensors and clearly demonstrating the utility of this disclosure's techniques.

Next, the tests represented by FIGS. 18-26 were also conducted at the same retain venue and demonstrate the results obtained using forward and backward processing of the sensor data to derive navigation solutions followed by apply the offline map matching techniques of this disclosure. In FIGS. 18 and 19, the smartphone was handheld and the trajectory obtained over a five minute period. In both depictions, the reference trajectories are cross hatched, with the forward processed navigation solutions shown in outline in FIG. 18 and the backward processed navigation solutions shown in outline in FIG. 19. The offline map matching techniques of this disclosure were applied to these navigation solutions to provide the enhanced navigation solutions shown in FIG. 20, with two anchor points established by point of sale locations. Here, the cross hatched reference trajectory overlays the enhanced navigation solution trajectory, so that deviations are indicated by the black portions. In FIGS. 21 and 22, the smartphone was dangling (i.e., held by a swinging arm as the user walked) and the trajectory obtained over a ten minute period. In both depictions, the reference trajectories are cross hatched, with the forward processed navigation solutions shown in outline in FIG. 21 and the backward processed navigations solutions shown in outline in FIG. 22. The offline map matching techniques of this disclosure were applied to these navigation solutions to provide the enhanced navigation solutions shown in FIG. 23, with three anchor points established by point of sale locations. Again, the cross hatched reference trajectory overlays the enhanced navigation solution trajectory, so that deviations are indicated by the black portions. Finally, in FIGS. 24 and 25, the smartphone was carried in the user's pocket and the trajectory obtained over a fifteen minute period. In both depictions, the reference trajectories are cross hatched, with the forward processed navigation solutions shown in outline in FIG. 24 and the backward processed navigation solutions shown in outline in FIG. 25. The offline map matching techniques of this disclosure were applied to these navigation solutions to provide the enhanced navigation solutions shown in FIG. 26, with five anchor points established by point of sale locations. Once more, the cross hatched reference trajectory overlays the enhanced navigation solution trajectory, so that deviations are indicated by the black portions. These tests show that very accurate trajectories may be obtained from the enhanced navigation solutions.

Depending on the architecture of device 100, sensor processor 108 and inertial sensor 112 may be formed on different chips, or as shown, may reside on the same chip. A sensor fusion algorithm employed to calculate the orientation of device 100 may be performed externally to sensor processor 108 and MFU 106, such as by host processor 104, or may be performed by MFU 106. A chip may be defined to include at least one substrate typically formed from a semiconductor material. A single chip may be formed from multiple substrates, where the substrates are mechanically bonded to preserve the functionality. A multiple chip includes at least two substrates, wherein the two substrates are electrically connected, but do not require mechanical bonding. A package provides electrical connection between the bond pads on the chip to a metal lead that can be soldered to a PCB. A package typically comprises a substrate and a cover. Integrated Circuit (IC) substrate may refer to a silicon substrate with electrical circuits, typically CMOS circuits.

One or more sensors may be incorporated into the package if desired using any suitable technique. In some embodiments, a sensor may be MEMS-based, such that a MEMS cap provides mechanical support for the MEMS structure. The MEMS structural layer is attached to the MEMS cap. The MEMS cap is also referred to as handle substrate or handle wafer. In some embodiments, the first substrate may be vertically stacked, attached and electrically connected to the second substrate in a single semiconductor chip, while in other embodiments, the first substrate may be disposed laterally and electrically connected to the second substrate in a single semiconductor package. In one embodiment, the first substrate is attached to the second substrate through wafer bonding, as described in commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 7,104,123, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, to simultaneously provide electrical connections and hermetically seal the MEMS devices. This fabrication technique advantageously enables technology that allows for the design and manufacture of high performance, multi-axis, inertial sensors in a very small and economical package. Integration at the wafer-level, minimizes parasitic capacitances, allowing for improved signal-to-noise relative to a discrete solution. Such integration at the wafer-level also enables the incorporation of a rich feature set which minimizes the need for external amplification.

The techniques of this disclosure may be combined with any navigation solution independent of the type of the state estimation or filtering technique used in this navigation solution. The state estimation technique can be linear, nonlinear or a combination thereof. Different examples of techniques used in the navigation solution may rely on a Kalman filter, an Extended Kalman filter, a non-linear filter such as a particle filter, or an artificial intelligence technique such as Neural Network or Fuzzy systems. The state estimation technique used in the navigation solution can use any type of system and/or measurement models. The navigation solution may follow an scheme for integrating the different sensors and systems, such as for example loosely coupled integration scheme or tightly coupled integration scheme among others. The navigation solution may utilize modeling (whether with linear or nonlinear, short memory length or long memory length) and/or automatic calibration for the errors of inertial sensors and/or the other sensors used.

Contemplated Embodiments

The present disclosure describes the body frame to be x forward, y positive towards right side of the body and z axis positive downwards. It is contemplated that any body-frame definition can be used for the application of the method and apparatus described herein.

It is contemplated that the techniques of this disclosure can be used with a navigation solution that may optionally utilize automatic zero velocity periods or static period detection with its possible updates and inertial sensors bias recalculations, non-holonomic updates module, advanced modeling and/or calibration of inertial sensors errors, derivation of possible measurements updates for them from GNSS when appropriate, automatic assessment of GNSS solution quality and detecting degraded performance, automatic switching between loosely and tightly coupled integration schemes, assessment of each visible GNSS satellite when in tightly coupled mode, and finally possibly can be used with a backward smoothing module with any type of backward smoothing technique and either running in post mission or in the background on buffered data within the same mission.

It is further contemplated that techniques of this disclosure can also be used with a mode of conveyance, technique ore motion mode detection technique to establish the mode of conveyance. This enables the detection of pedestrian mode among other modes such as for example driving mode. When pedestrian mode is detected, the method presented in this disclosure can be made operational to determine the misalignment between the device and the pedestrian.

It is further contemplated that techniques of this disclosure can also be used with a navigation solution that is further programmed to run. In the background, a routine to simulate artificial outages in the absolute navigation information and estimate the parameters of another instance of the state estimation technique used for the solution in the present navigation module to optimize the accuracy and the consistency of the solution. The accuracy and consistency is assessed by comparing the temporary background solution during the simulated outages to a reference solution. The reference solution may be one of the following examples: the absolute navigation information (e.g. GNSS); the forward integrated navigation solution in the device integrating the available sensors with the absolute navigation information (e.g. GNSS) and possibly with the optional speed or velocity readings; or a backward smoothed integrated navigation solution integrating the available sensors with the absolute navigation information (e.g. GNSS) and possibly with the optional speed or velocity readings. The background processing can run either on the same processor as the forward solution processing or on another processor that can communicate with the first processor and can read the saved data from a shared location. The outcome of the background processing solution can benefit the real-time navigation solution in its future run (i.e. real-time run after the background routine has finished running), for example, by having improved values for the parameters of the forward state estimation technique used for navigation in the present module.

It is further contemplated that the techniques of this disclosure can also be used with a navigation solution that is further integrated with maps (such as street maps, indoor snaps or models, or any other environment map or model in cases of applications that have such maps or models available), and a map aided or model aided routine. Map aided or model aided can further enhance the navigation solution during the absolute navigation information (such as GNSS) degradation or interruption. In the case of model aided, a sensor or a group of sensors that acquire information about the environment can be used such as, for example. Laser range finders, cameras and vision systems, or sonar systems. These new systems can be used either as an extra help to enhance the accuracy of the navigation solution during the absolute navigation information problems (degradation or absence), or they can totally replace the absolute navigation information in some applications.

It is further contemplated that the techniques of this disclosure can also be used with a navigation solution that, when working either in a tightly coupled scheme or a hybrid loosely/tightly coupled option, need not be bound to utilize pseudorange measurements (which are calculated from the code not the carrier phase, thus they are called code-based pseudoranges) and the Doppler measurements (used to get the pseudorange rates). The carrier phase measurement of the GNSS receiver can be used as well, for example; (i) as an alternate way to calculate ranges instead of the code-based pseudoranges, or (ii) to enhance the range calculation by incorporating information from both code-based pseudorange and carrier-phase measurements; such enhancement is the carrier-smoothed pseudorange.

It is further contemplated that the techniques of this disclosure can also be used with a navigation solution that relies on an ultra-tight integration scheme between GNSS receiver and the other sensors readings.

It is further contemplated that the techniques of this disclosure can also be used with a navigation solution that uses various wireless communication systems that can also be used for positioning and navigation either as an additional aid (which will be more beneficial when GNSS is unavailable) or as a substitute for the GNSS information (e.g. for applications where GNSS is not applicable). Examples of these wireless communication systems used for positioning are, such as, those provided by cellular phone towers and signals, radio signals, digital television signals, WiFi, or WiMax. For example, for cellular phone based applications, an absolute coordinate from cell phone towers and the ranges between the indoor user and the towers may be utilized for positioning, whereby the range might be estimated by different methods among which calculating the time of arrival or the time difference of arrival of the closest cell phone positioning coordinates. A method known as Enhanced Observed Time Difference (E-OTD) can be used to get the known coordinates and range. The standard deviation for the range measurements may depend upon the type of oscillator used in the cell phone, and cell tower timing equipment and the transmission losses. WiFi positioning can be done in a variety of ways that includes but is not limited to time of arrival, time difference of arrival, angles of arrival, received signal strength, and fingerprinting techniques, among others; all of the methods provide different level of accuracies. The wireless communication system used for positioning may use different techniques for modeling the errors in the ranging, angles, or signal strength from wireless signals, and may use different multipath mitigation techniques. All the above mentioned ideas, among others, are also applicable in a similar manner for other wireless positioning techniques based on wireless communications systems.

It is further contemplated that the techniques of this disclosure can also be used with a navigation solution that utilizes aiding information from other moving devices. This aiding information can be used as additional aid (that will be more beneficial when GNSS is unavailable) or as a substitute for the GNSS information (e.g. for applications where GNSS based positioning is not applicable). One example of aiding information from other devices may be relying on wireless communication systems between different devices. The underlying idea is that the devices that have better positioning or navigation solution (for example having GNSS with good availability and accuracy) can help the devices with degraded or unavailable GNSS to get an improved positioning or navigation solution. This help relies on the well-known position of the aiding device(s) and the wireless communication system for positioning the device(s) with degraded or unavailable GNSS. This contemplated variant refers to the one or both circumstance(s) where: (i) the device(s) with degraded or unavailable GNSS utilize the methods described herein and get aiding from other devices and communication system, (ii) the aiding device with GNSS available and thus a good navigation solution utilize the methods described herein. The wireless communication system used for positioning may rely on different communication protocols, and it may rely on different methods, such as for example, time of arrival, time difference of arrival, angles of arrival, and received signal strength, among others. The wireless communication system used for positioning may use different techniques for modeling the errors in the ranging and/or angles from wireless signals, and may use different multipath mitigation techniques.

The embodiments and techniques described above may be implemented in software as various interconnected functional blocks or distinct software modules. This is not necessary, however, and there may be cases where these functional blocks or modules are equivalently aggregated into a single logic device, program or operation with unclear boundaries. In any event the functional blocks and software modules implementing the embodiments described above, or features of the interface can be implemented by themselves, or in combination with other operations in either hardware or software, either within the device entirely, or in conjunction with the device and other processor enabled devices in communication with the device, such as a server.

Although a few embodiments have been shown and described, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that various changes and modifications can be made to these embodiments without changing or departing from their scope, intent or functionality. The terms and expressions used in the preceding specification have been used herein as terms of description and not of limitation, and there is no intention its the use of such terms and expressions of excluding equivalents of the features shown and described or portions thereof, it being recognized that the disclosure is defined and limited only by the claims that follow. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for enhancing a navigation solution of a portable device and a platform using map information, wherein the mobility of the device is constrained or unconstrained within the platform and wherein the device may be tilted to any orientation, the method comprising: a) obtaining sensor data for the portable device representing motion of the portable device at a plurality of epochs over a first period of time; b) deriving navigation solutions for the epochs based at least in part on the sensor data; c) estimating position information for the portable device based at least in part on the plurality of navigation solutions at a time subsequent to the first period of time; d) obtaining map information for an area encompassing locations of the portable device during the first period of time; e) generating multiple hypotheses regarding possible positions of the portable device for at least one epoch during the first period of time based at least in part on the estimated position information and the map information; f) managing the hypotheses based at least in part on the estimated position information and the map information; g) processing the managed hypotheses to update the estimated position information for the portable device; and h) providing an enhanced navigation solution for the at least one epoch using the updated estimated position information.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising obtaining absolute navigation information for the portable device, wherein the navigation solution derived for at least one epoch is based at least in part on the absolute navigation information.
 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the absolute navigation information is obtained from any one or any combination of the following: (i) a global navigation satellite system (GNSS); (ii) cell-based positioning; (iii) WiFi-based positioning; or (iv) other wireless-based positioning.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein providing an enhanced navigation solution comprises a forward processing operation over the first period of time.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein providing an enhanced navigation solution comprise a backward processing operation over the first period of time.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein providing an enhanced navigation solution comprises a forward processing operation and a backward processing operation over the first period of time.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein providing an enhanced navigation solution comprises a forward processing operation, a backward processing operation over the first period of time, and a combination of the forward processing and backward processing.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein providing an enhanced navigation solution comprises a smoothing operation over the first period of time.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein providing an enhanced navigation solution comprises a backward smoothing operation over the first period of time.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein providing an enhanced navigation solution comprises a multiple pass processing operation over the first period of time.
 11. The method of claim 1, further comprising filtering heading information for the navigation solution of at least one epoch.
 12. The method of claim 11, wherein filtering heading information comprises applying a zero-phase low pass filter.
 13. The method of claim 1, further comprising categorizing the plurality of navigation solutions into straight-line segments and turn segments.
 14. The method of claim 13, further comprising detecting a false turn.
 15. The method of claim 1, further comprising detecting a non-meaningful motion period within the first period of time.
 16. The method of claim 15, wherein the non-meaningful motion period is a fidgeting period.
 17. The method of claim 16, further comprising tracking misalignment corresponding to the fidgeting period.
 18. The method of claim 16, further comprising compensating steps detected during the fidgeting period.
 19. The method of claim 1, further comprising preprocessing the map information.
 20. The method of claim 19, wherein preprocessing the map information comprises extracting map entities.
 21. The method of claim 20, wherein preprocessing the map information further comprises clipping at least one foreground map entity from a background entity.
 22. The method of claim 20, wherein clipping the background entity defines a traversable area.
 23. The method of claim 19, wherein preprocessing the map information further comprises representing a map entity as a relatively complex polygon and decomposing the polygon into a plurality of relatively more simple polygons.
 24. The method of claim 19, wherein preprocessing the map information comprises generating a grid of connected links and nodes.
 25. The method of claim 1, wherein the estimated position information comprises an error region representing potential positions of the portable device as the at least one instant during the first period of time.
 26. The method of claim 25, wherein at least one of the hypotheses is generated by projecting the error region onto the map information.
 27. The method of claim 25, wherein a plurality of hypotheses are generated by projecting the error region onto the map information when an overlap with a plurality of map entities occurs.
 29. The method of claim 25, wherein the map information comprises a grid map.
 30. The method of claim 1, wherein the map information comprises a grid map and the estimated position information is based at least in part on a correlation between a determined user trajectory for the at least one epoch and a topological feature of the grid map.
 31. The method of claim 30, further comprising applying a weighted topological algorithm.
 32. The method of claim 1, wherein managing the hypotheses comprises at least one of adding, eliminating and combining hypotheses.
 33. The method of claim 32, further comprising identifying an anchor point, wherein the navigation solution derived for at least one epoch is associated with the anchor point and wherein managing the hypotheses is based at least in part on the identified anchor point.
 34. The method of claim 33, further comprising identifying a plurality of ordered anchor points.
 35. The method of claim 34, further comprising generating a hypothesis based at least in part on the ordered anchor points.
 36. The method of claim 34, further comprising identifying a plurality of unordered anchor points.
 37. The method of claim 34, further comprising identifying at least one improperly ordered anchor point.
 38. The method of claim 32, further comprising identifying a plurality of unordered anchor points, wherein managing the hypotheses is based at least in part on the unordered anchor points.
 39. The method of claim 1, wherein managing the hypotheses further comprises applying a decision making logic.
 40. The method of claim 39, wherein the decision making logic is configured for a wall crossing event.
 41. The method of claim 39, wherein the decision making logic is configured for a level change event.
 42. The method of claim 1, further comprising storing generated multiple hypotheses for a plurality of epochs.
 43. The method of claim 42, wherein storing generated multiple hypotheses comprises relating hypotheses to each other.
 44. The method of claim 43, further comprising weighting the stored generated multiple hypotheses based at least in part on the relations.
 45. The method of claim 1, wherein the navigation solution comprises a motion mode for the user.
 46. The method of claim 45, wherein the estimated position information is based at least in part on the motion mode.
 47. The method of claim 46, wherein the hypotheses are managed based at least in part on the motion mode.
 48. The method of claim 45, wherein a level change event is based at least in part on the motion mode.
 49. The method of claim 1, wherein the enhanced navigation solution comprises a motion mode for the user detected based at least in part on a map entity associated with the estimated position information. cm
 50. The method of claim 1, wherein position information for the portable device is estimated using at least one of a prediction only Kalman filter, a near constant velocity Kalman filter, a prediction only particle filter and a near constant velocity particle filter.
 51. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of deriving the navigation solutions, obtaining map information, generating multiple hypotheses, managing the hypotheses, processing the managed hypotheses to update the estimated position information for the portable device and providing an enhanced navigation solution using the updated estimated position information is performed remotely.
 52. A portable device for enhancing a navigation solution of the portable device and a platform using map information, wherein the mobility of the portable device is constrained or unconstrained within the platform and wherein the portable device may be tilted to any orientation, the portable device comprising: a) an integrated sensor assembly, configured to output sensor data representing motion of the portable device for the portable device at a plurality of epochs over a first period of time; b) a navigation module configured to derive navigation solutions based at least in part on the sensor data at a plurality of sensor epochs; and c) a processor configured to implement: i) a position estimator for providing estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on the plurality of navigation solutions at a time subsequent to the first period of time; ii) a map handler for obtaining map information for an area encompassing locations of the portable device during the first period of time; and iii) a hypothesis analyzer for generating and managing multiple hypotheses regarding possible positions of the portable device for at least one epoch during the first period of time based at least in part on the estimated position information and the map information, wherein the processor is further configured to update the estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on the managed hypotheses to provide an enhanced navigation solution for the at least one epoch using the updated estimated position information.
 53. The portable device of claim 52, further comprising a source of absolute navigation information for the portable device, wherein the navigation solution derived for at least one epoch is based at least in part on the absolute navigation information.
 54. The portable device of claim 53, wherein the absolute navigation information is obtained from any one or any combination of the following: (i) a global navigation satellite system (GNSS); (ii) cell-based positioning; (iii) WiFi-based positioning; or (iv) other wireless-based positioning.
 55. The portable device of claim 52, wherein the sensor assembly includes an accelerometer and a gyroscope.
 56. The portable device of claim 52, wherein the sensor assembly comprises an inertial sensor implemented as a Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS).
 57. The portable device of claim 52, further comprising memory for storing multiple hypotheses generated by the hypotheses analyzer.
 58. A server for enhancing a navigation solution of a portable device and a platform using map information, wherein the mobility of the portable device is constrained or unconstrained within the platform and wherein the portable device may be tilted to any orientation, the server comprising a) a communications module for receiving information provided by the portable device, wherein the information corresponds to a plurality of epochs over a first period of time of sensor data representing motion of the portable device; and b) a processor is configured to implement: i) a position estimator for providing estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on a plurality of navigation solutions derived for the epochs at a time subsequent to the first period of time; ii) a map handler for obtaining map information for an area encompassing locations of the portable device during the first period of time; and iii) a hypothesis analyzer for generating and managing multiple hypotheses regarding possible positions of the portable device for at least one epoch during the first period of time based at least in part on the estimated position information and the map information, wherein the processor is further configured to update the estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on the managed hypotheses to provide an enhanced navigation solution for the at least one epoch using the updated estimated position information.
 59. The server of claim 58, wherein the information received by the communications module comprises a sensor data for the portable device representing motion of the portable device at the epochs and wherein the processor is further configured to derive navigation solutions for the epochs based at least in part on the sensor data.
 60. The server of claim 58, wherein the information received by the communications module comprises navigation solutions derived for the epochs by the portable device.
 61. The portable device of claim 58, wherein the communications module is configured to transmit the enhanced navigation solution to the portable device.
 62. The server of claim 58, further comprising memory for storing multiple hypotheses generated by the hypotheses analyzer.
 63. A system for providing an enhanced navigation solution using map information comprising: a) a portable device comprising an integrated sensor assembly, configured to output sensor data representing motion of the portable device for the portable device at a plurality of epochs over a first period of time and a communications module for transmitting information corresponding to the epochs; and b) remote processing resources configured to receive the information from the portable device and having a processor configured to implement: i) a position estimator for providing estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on a plurality of navigation solutions for the portable device derived for each epoch, at a time subsequent to the first period of time; ii) a map handler for obtaining map information for an area encompassing locations of the portable device during the first period of time; and iii) a hypothesis analyzer for generating and managing multiple hypotheses regarding possible positions of the portable device for at least one epoch during the first period of time based at least in part on the estimated position information and the map information, wherein the processor is further configured to update the estimated position information for the portable device based at least in part on the managed hypotheses to provide an enhanced navigation solution for the at least one epoch using the updated estimated position information.
 64. The system of claim 63, wherein the information received by the remote processing resources comprises sensor data for the portable device and wherein the remote processing resources are further configured to derive navigation solutions for the epochs based at least in part on the sensor data.
 65. The server of claim 63, wherein the portable device further comprises a navigation module configured to derive navigation solutions based at least in part on the sensor data at the plurality of epochs and wherein the communications module transmits the navigation solutions.
 66. The system of claim 63, wherein the remote processing resources are further configured to transmit the enhanced navigation solution to the portable device.
 67. The system of claim 63, wherein the remote processing resources further comprise memory for storing multiple hypotheses generated by the hypotheses analyzer. 